


Kisses Are Better From The Outside (or: Meddle not in the affairs of Venom, for you are juicy and full of snacks)

by Ryxl



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Multi, Stan Lee Cameo, bought the DVD specifically to write this, crunchy snacks, death averted, i did so much research for this, implied future poly tangle, not actually tatch's fault this time, took a seam ripper to canon and sewed it up nice and tight, toothy kisses, you can pry this au from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:51:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryxl/pseuds/Ryxl
Summary: Nothing special here, just a retelling of the movie…except that Eddie’s less of a douche, Drake’s more of a bad guy, Skirth’s not so naïve, and oh yeah, Anne’s the one hosting Venom. Dan is fleshed out, relationships are detailed, mechanics make more sense, injuries are more realistic, and agender aliens get xie/xir/xirself pronouns.





	1. Bad decisions

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really not okay with how the movie had Eddie violate Anne's trust by reading her confidential, legal emails and then getting them both fired. (If your partner reads your emails behind your back, it's time to break it off. Just a PSA.) I'm even less okay with how the story tried to pull the whole "sad loser protag gets the girl he doesn't deserve" beats, and in general there was just some shitty writing for half the story. Which baffles me because the other half of the story was great, and Anne and Venom had fantastic chemistry. So I started thinking - what would happen if she was the compatible host instead of Eddie? Apparently, the answer is I buy the DVD and do a ton of research and spawn an AU.

** Venom **

The canister was sturdy, that was for certain. Riot had lashed out in rage as the first one closed around xir, with most of the others fleeing as best they could. There were a handful who, for their own reasons, either slithered eagerly into a canister or ‘allowed’ themselves to be captured.

Phage.

Toxin.

And, of course, Venom. Xie had been scurrying towards the suited figures because whatever primitive world they’d come from, it had space flight. That meant intelligent hosts, and intelligent hosts meant _things to do_. Things that weren’t just being endlessly bored riding a chunk of frozen rock through the vastness of space hoping that they’d aimed correctly and that they would, eventually, _get somewhere_.

Now xie was secured, along with the other three, peering eyelessly through the canister, trying to make sense of their future hosts’ communication and wondering when Riot would decide xie’d had enough. That the grey symbiote would break out was a given; Riot never followed any orders but xir own. The only question was: how close to landing would xie make xir move?

Venom guessed they had just begun descent to the surface of whatever unwitting planet they were being brought to when Riot formed xirself into a collection of spikes, shattering xir containment canister. That turned out, in Venom’s opinion, to have been a mistake as the suited figures panicked and the spacecraft began atmospheric re-entry in a decidedly rough manner. Phage and Toxin roiled excitedly in their canisters like the idiots they were, eager to be the first ones feasting once they landed, but the black symbiote braced for impact. Their descent was nearly uncontrolled, the craft’s thermal shielding tearing itself apart as they ripped through the atmosphere, and xie had no desire to die in a fiery explosion when the impact came.

Surprisingly, the canisters held. They had been constructed solidly enough that the impact did not shatter them, something that couldn’t be said for the entities in the suits. The one Riot picked had at random for xir first host survived long enough for the planet’s natives to haul it away in what Venom guessed was some emergency vehicle. Phage pressed xirself furiously against the clear walls constraining xir, a writhing mass of yellow, as their leader was carried away to begin xir reign of destruction. Toxin hurled xirself from side to side, alarming the creatures as the canister shook with the force of the blue symbiote’s futile wrath.

Venom merely curdled, trying to figure out what was going on. Someone had sent that spacecraft. Someone had given orders to bring back samples. _Someone_ was going to want to see the three that had survived the crash, and the best way to survive whatever that someone had planned was to establish that xie was a reasonable entity and absolutely _not_ the kind of symbiote that would gleefully build pyramids of severed heads (Tasty snacks! Crunchy on the outside, squishy in the middle!) and stack the bodies artistically.

That way, they’d never see it coming when xie _did_ rip their heads off and stack the bodies in a corner.

Ah, this was going to be fun. Well, until Riot found xir way back to wherever they were being taken and started ordering them around again, but in the meantime…

_Fun_.

 

** Anne **

Morning.

Anne woke up with Eddie’s arms around her, cuddling her to his chest, and smiled. It was going to be a busy day – for both of them, and her mind was already in motion, planning and scheduling – but right now, for the next thirty seconds, she could enjoy the _amazingly_ comforting embrace of the man she would soon spend the rest of her life waking up with.

Eddie’s top-notch hugs and unfairly reassuring cuddles were one of the reasons she’d said yes, actually, and most of the time she felt they made up for some of his…less-endearing traits.

She reached out to shut her alarm off just before it could sound and – reluctantly – slipped out of bed. Eddie sighed in his sleep and rolled over, somehow managing to take her pillow with him, and wound up with it on his head. Smiling, she shook her head and began getting ready for the day.

Shower. Teeth. Breakfast. Hair. Pick up the clothes strewn about – Eddie’s – and put them in the hamper. Coffee. Empty the dishwasher, which Eddie had sworn for the last week he was going to do, so he could switch to swearing he’d load it with the dirty dishes piled on the counter. Then, sipping her coffee, she dressed and started packing for the day.

Eddie was still sleeping.

Well, it wasn’t a surprise. He always did sleep like the dead, possibly because he pushed himself so hard when he was chasing a story. Anne watched him, sipping her coffee, and smiled softly. When he was chasing a story, he focused on it to the exclusion of things like _sleeping_ and _eating_ , and his poor abused body had long ago decided that it would make the most of every opportunity. When he slept, he was down for the count. When he ate, his body tried desperately to pack on the pounds. He was probably the only person in the whole city who could gain two pounds from eating a twelve-ounce steak. It wasn’t a _bad_ thing, in her mind. Made his hugs that much more comforting.

Finally, it was time. She had to wake Eddie up before she left, or he’d sleep through his meeting entirely. Anne added her coffee cup to the herd of mugs on the counter and took back her pillow, only to whap him on the head with it.

“Morning, sunshine,” she teased, her voice reflecting the warmth of her brilliant smile because of the many faces of Eddie Brock, the baffled just-woke-up one was one of her favorites.

“What?” he muttered as the pillow hit his head. “I’m awake.” The words were pure reflex, because he was most assuredly _not_ awake yet.

Anne dropped the pillow on his chest and moved away from the bed, grinning. Dazedly, he pushed at the pillow and then whipped it at her, but she dodged. “Missed me,” she said lightly.

“I’m awake,” he repeated, still not quite the truth, although he was sitting up and his mussed hair made her want to muss it more.

“You can have it back,” she told him as she picked the pillow up, and he was halfway through thanking her sleepily when she nailed him with it, right in the face.

Eddie went down like a sack of potatoes with a sound of good-natured protest, and Anne felt like her face was going to stay in a permanent smile until _at least_ lunch.

_This_ time, Eddie really was awake because he didn’t try to claim that he was. What he said instead was, “Oh, wow, you’re wearing a suit!” as he struggled to sit up again. “Yes! I love it when you wear the suit.”

It made her smile – again – because even though it was just a business suit, he somehow made it sound like a slinky black dress she’d put on _just for him_. “Thank you,” she murmured, paperwork in hand. Then, sadly, it was time to make sure he knew _why_ she was wearing the suit and what _he_ was doing that day because she would be willing to bet actual money her fiancé wouldn’t remember if she didn’t tell him. “I have depositions today in the Life Foundation case,” she said crisply, then reached for a casual tone when she said, “Hey, let me know how your meeting goes.”

Maybe he would remember he had a meeting. Maybe he wouldn’t. But either way, she _sounded_ like she was assuming he remembered, and if he didn’t then she could remind him.

“My meeting?” he repeated blankly as she headed for the counter. “Oh shit. Yeah.” He remembered, and he sounded disgruntled that it even _existed_ to _be_ remembered. “My meeting.”

She had to smile again as he stared blearily at the contents of the bedside table. “Coffee,” she said tenderly as she offered him the mug.

Eddie looked up as he reached for the mug she was already placing in his hands, and before he could say anything, she stole a kiss full of promises from his lips.

“Mmm! You are perfect,” he breathed, making her smile _again._

“Thank you,” she said through her grin as she gathered her papers. He may not be the best about household chores, but there were worse things in a relationship than having compliments lavished on her in the first sixty seconds her partner was awake.

“Hey, you know what…um…” Eddie stumbled to make his thoughts come out in actual words before she left. “You know what night it is tonight, right?”

The look he gave her was momentary fear, like she could have forgotten, or uncertainty, like she would turn him down.

“Date night,” she said in a wicked voice that conveyed how much she was _absolutely_ looking forward to it.

He hummed in relief that was trying to sound like he hadn’t been worried at all. “So, I will- I will pick you up around, uh, six, and _please, do not forget_ your _helmet_.”

For just a second Anne was filled with irritation. It’s not like _she_ was the one who couldn’t remember anything that hadn’t been scribbled on the back of one hand in ballpoint pen. But then she smiled again and picked up her paperwork. “Oh, I’m glad that you like it, because I plan on wearing it at our wedding.”

Well, really, she expected that he’d have forgotten to arrange for transportation, but even if he didn’t…well…riding off to their honeymoon on the back of Eddie’s motorcycle wasn’t entirely a bad idea.

“That’s hot,” he murmured, nodding, like he wasn’t aware the words had come out of his mouth.

“Feed the cat,” she reminded him sharply as she left the room.

“I will,” he promised, but she knew he wouldn’t. That’s why she’d left dry food in its bowl. “I love you!” he called.

“Love you too,” she called back from the other end of the apartment. “Feed the cat!”

Whether Eddie fed the cat or made it to his meeting on time was no longer in her hands; she had depositions.

 

“I don’t know why he gave me this assignment, Annie,” sighed Eddie, slumping in the restaurant’s booth as he finished telling her about his meeting. “It’s not…it’s not what I _do_.”

After a day full of taking depositions in a wrongful-death suit, Anne could think of a few reasons, and they sat in her gut like the first ominous rumblings of food poisoning.

Had Drake asked for Eddie specifically?

Did he know that Eddie was engaged to her?

Was he angling for some kind of publicity stunt that would make enough noise to cover the court case?

“He knows your reputation for getting the truth out,” she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. “If you’re on camera with Drake saying the rockets are safe, then the audience can be confident that it’s the truth.”

Eddie didn’t look convinced, and to be honest, Anne wasn’t convinced herself. But he didn’t need her making him paranoid about this; he was anxious enough about it already. _Especially_ because he hadn’t been given enough warning to do any serious digging beforehand.

“Are you gonna behave yourself tomorrow?” she asked lightly, hoping against all reason that the answer would be yes.

“No,” he answered unrepentantly. “No, I’m gonna do my job. That’s what I’m gonna do. I can’t, you know, _not_ do my job,” he protested as the good humor left her face. “The guy you work for is a complete…”

“I don’t _work_ for Drake,” Anne interrupted, trying to hold her patience in both hands because they’d _had_ this argument, many times, and she did not want to argue the comparative ethics of living off of morally grey money _again_ and certainly not in the restaurant. “I work for _my firm_ , and my firm…works for him,” she finished lamely, realizing as the words left her mouth that she should have said _retains him as a client_ , but off-the-cuff arguments without hours of prep and a judge watching weren’t her verbal forte. “And I’m sure that they defend many people that you don’t deem worthy,” she limped on, a note of desperation in her voice as Eddie sighed and looked away, “but we don’t – we can’t _live_ on your salary, Eddie, _you_ can barely live on your salary.”

He flinched at that, and immediately she regretted it because she _knew_ money was a sensitive subject for him, that he blamed himself for not being able to shoulder a full fifty percent of their budget, and now he was probably feeling like shit because when the check came, _she’d_ be the one paying it even though Date Night was supposed to be _him_ taking _her_ out.

“Just…think about what you’re going to ask in the interview?” she half-pled, taking his hands in hers and trying to keep him from falling into a pit of self-loathing over the money thing. “I know you know how to do your job, baby, and you’re _good_ at your job, but Drake has a lot of power and even more money and maybe you don’t want to go poking at that hornet’s nest, alright? We don’t want a repeat-” hurriedly, she fished for something else to say instead of ending that sentence. “We don’t- I can’t just pick up my career and move to another city like you can, Eddie.” That wasn’t much better, but moving once on short notice had been stressful enough that her adrenaline was surging just _thinking_ about the _possibility_ that she might have to do it again. “I won’t move again. I can’t.”

And that would be the shrill edge of panic in her voice, tears pricking at her eyes, and Eddie’s lips on hers feeling like a scratchy lifeline that she was clinging to, clinging to _him_ , everything forgotten in the baffling magic of his grounding, comforting hug.

“Less talking more kissing,” she breathed.

Eddie squeezed her hands gently. “Alright, let’s just…get the check…”

The silver lining, Anne thought as she signed the credit card slip, was that Eddie wasn’t focused on their income disparity anymore. The stormcloud, of course, was that he was now _extremely_ worried, about her or the interview or both. Probably both, with some existential dread thrown in for flavor, but she couldn’t really do much about that because she was just as worried that Drake was going to somehow sabotage her life and she’d have to pick up the pieces and move _again-_

Lips on hers broke the spiral before it could really get started, and Eddie murmured something endearing into her hair as she melted into his embrace. Then they were securing helmets and she was clinging to his waist, relaxing almost against her will as they zoomed off into the night. As awkward as he could be sometimes, especially in more formal settings, once Eddie was mounted on his motorcycle he was all smooth confidence and it was probably more attractive than it should have been.

By the time they reached the apartment, all thoughts of interviews and disaster had evaporated and the trek up the stairs was a tangled mess of arms and legs and lips as they tried to get hands on skin before they’d even reached the living room. Then they were almost too busy kissing to bother with clothes, except that Eddie was fumbling with her tie and Anne pushed his hands away to loosen it, only to slip it around his neck and use it as a makeshift leash as she tugged him into the bedroom.

Anne adored moments like this, when Eddie looked at her as though she were a goddess come to earth and he absolutely _could not_ believe how lucky he was that she chose to grace his life with her presence. She was reasonably certain that he would let her tie him up or beat him and do all kinds of things to him, but she had no desire to do any of that. She just wanted to lose herself in the heat of his body, the softness of his skin and the inexplicable way just _touching_ him seemed to whisper wordless reassurance; an aura of _it’s all going to be okay_ that was sweet and refreshing, like the shade cast by a tree on a sunny day as the breeze tickled its leaves. There was no better way to fall asleep than to be surrounded by Eddie’s comforting warmth, and no better way to wake up. So they crashed together, writhed together, panted and groaned and cried out together, sweated together and flopped back onto the sheets together and just _breathed_ together until their hearts stopped racing, and then they kissed tenderly as they pulled on clothes to sleep in and finally, finally, tangled together in a warm, loose-limbed hug and drifted off without a single thought in either of their heads.

 

Anne sat in the break room, munching a Greek salad and watching the ‘special interview’ with Carlton Drake, head of the Life Foundation. Eddie was in his element, obediently asking question after question about the Life Foundation rockets with the wide-eyed, unassuming demeanor that had lulled so many people off-guard and seemed to be doing the same with Drake. With just the slightest hint of impatience in his voice and frequent annoyed glances at the camera, he repeatedly assured Eddie that the fuel line, ignition, heat shielding, etc. weren’t to blame for the LF-1 crashing and thus, the LF-2 was perfectly safe.

As Drake admitted evasively that the shuttle had failed to engage proper re-entry protocols because “an object” had gotten loose and struck one of the crew, Anne suddenly realized that he didn’t know he was live. He thought the interview was being recorded, and would be edited to make him look better. Instead, Eddie was peeling back the curtain on live TV, giving Drake enough rope to hang himself, and he was helpfully tying his own noose. Sure, the audience was being reassured that the _rockets_ were safe, but in doing so, Drake himself was painting the Life Foundation being as a pretty shady operation led by a shady man.

“One of the astronauts _did_ survive the impact,” Drake was saying defensively, and Anne noted he didn’t say how _long_ the astronaut had survived for.

On screen, Eddie nodded. “Well, I guess that means your space program has a better survival rate than your pancreatic cancer gene therapy trials,” he said in a deadpan tone. “Tell me – isn’t it a bit of a misnomer to call your organization the _Life_ Foundation, when so many people involved in your programs wind up dead?”

That, it seemed, was the last straw and Drake made a clear ‘kill the cameras’ gesture, only to look enraged as the camera panned uncertainly but kept rolling. Then there was a sudden motion, the camera swung wildly, and the station cut back to a startled anchorwoman.

Anne dropped her fork to cover her mouth with both hands, laughing hard enough that she couldn’t hear whatever the anchorwoman was saying while the black olive speared on the fork’s tines was jarred loose and rolled unnoticed off the edge of the table.

 

** Venom **

Venom was _not_ having fun.

Xir canister, as well as the other two symbiote-filled ones and the remnants of the one Riot had broken, were loaded into a vehicle that traveled in an absence of communication between the native entities inside it. After a period of time, the vehicle stopped – but they were loaded onto a _different_ vehicle. That one traveled with only a little discussion for a longer distance before they were loaded into a different type of vehicle, this one filled with natives and equipment. Phage and Toxin again lashed out, trying to break the clear barrier between them and their would-be hosts, but it was useless. None of them had Riot’s ability to form themselves into rigid structures, the trait that had won xir leadership over xir faction, so they only succeeded in alarming the natives.

Venom barely shifted in xir container, restless motions that got the attention of the native entities, and with what sounded like _alarm_ they clustered around xir canister and peered at xir. Xie rose up in a clear reaction of knowing xie was being watched, observing the observers, and the alarm shifted to excitement.

Good enough for now; Venom settled in to be thoroughly bored during the next period of travel, which turned out to be wise because it lasted _considerably_ longer, and xie could see that xir fellow symbiotes were exhausting their furious energy. The natives communicated amongst themselves this time, constant chattering sounds that Venom did xir best to try to catalogue and analyze, but xie still hadn’t gleaned much past some rudimentary social structure when the vehicle – they’d been flying, inter-atmospheric travel which made Venom wickedly amused at how hard Riot would have to work to find them – descended and came in for a landing.

It was more of the small vehicles after that, with nothing to do but wait until finally, the vehicle reached its destination and Venom – because xir less-hostile behavior had earned xir the position closest to the vehicle’s door – got xir first glimpse of the one who had, xie guessed, been the one to order their ‘capture’ and retrieval. Venom made the ‘I see you looking at me’ motions at this leader, while behind xir the other two tried again to escape containment, and the head native uttered sounds in a tone of what Venom would tentatively classify as awe, or perhaps admiration.

Unfortunately, that awe and admiration – which Venom was now confident in, after the head native had snapped orders to its subordinates and made repeated cooing sounds at xir – did not extend to freedom. Xie and the other two were carried into what looked like a very secure science facility, delivered with many incomprehensible orders and warnings to a trusted lieutenant, and then _left there_.

Clearly, they were prisoners. Phage and Toxin seemed convinced of that, at least, and redoubled their efforts to escape. Venom wasn’t so sure, and redoubled xir effort to establish communication with the trusted lieutenant because what xie suspected was that the native leader _didn’t know they were intelligent_ and they weren’t _prisoners_.

They were samples to be studied.

 

** Anne **

For the next few days, Carlton Drake’s embarrassment on live TV was the talk of the town – that is, when people weren’t speculating about why the Life Foundation even _had_ rockets or wondering about the pancreatic cancer gene therapy thing. Then he must have found the connection between the reporter who had so thoroughly manipulated him into humiliating himself and the lawyer who’d handled depositions for his pancreatic cancer gene therapy wrongful death suit, because Friday morning he leaned on the firm.

_Hard_.

Anne found herself facing the partners, both Michelinie _and_ McFarlane – who assured her that she was a jewel, a valuable asset, and they absolutely _did not_ want to lose her – and told that Drake had ripped them a new one, accused her of spilling confidential information to her fiancé, and demanded that they ‘do something’ to prove that they were as good as their reputation and could handle his suit with professional impartiality.

In other words, he wanted her gone. Not just off the case, but out of the firm entirely.

She panicked.

Michelinie and McFarlane didn’t believe that she’d told Eddie anything, thankfully, and they didn’t want to take her off the case. They told her that in all confidentiality, they thought Drake had brought it on himself by agreeing to (or demanding) the interview without making sure of the details and now he was throwing a shit-fit to try to cover that miscalculation, but he had too much pull and they had to do _something._

_She_ had to do something.

Fifteen minutes later she was in her office, sobbing into Eddie’s voicemail, telling him that she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t see him or talk to him. There was money in their joint account; she told him to use it to stay in a hotel for a couple of days while she sorted their things out. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember if she’d said ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I love you’ or even the exact words she’d used; everything was an achingly hollow blur and she’d lost half an hour to crying and rocking as her mind shuddered away from having to make the choice between her job and sanity…

…and the man she loved.

The rest of the day passed in a fog while she took care of busywork – filing and straightening, the sort of thing she couldn’t cause more problems with by doing while emotionally impaired. Then the day was over and she was taking an Uber to the restaurant because the reservations were for six-thirty, her brain a whirl of trying to mentally re-arrange her schedule for next week and remember what chores still needed to be done during the weekend. It was only as she stood at the host’s podium and announced that she had reservations for two that she realized what she’d done and began crying again while the hostess uncomfortably repeated that she could either cancel or wait for the rest of her party and she tried to explain that the rest of her party – Eddie – wouldn’t be joining her.

“Maybe I could help?” a man said from the side.

Anne turned to look. He was tall, dark, and conventionally attractive. One-hundred-percent respectable. Serious and well-dressed and a bit more than just politely concerned. A modern-day prince sweeping in to save her from her situation.

“Surgery ran late at the hospital,” he was explaining in a smooth, professional voice, “and unfortunately that meant my date ate and left without me. But I’d be happy to keep you company if your date can’t make it.”

“I probably won’t be very _good_ company,” she demurred, or tried to, because he smiled.

“You sound like you could use a sympathetic ear, and I’m feeling guilty for unintentionally standing up my date. Let me make up for ruining _her_ evening by making _yours_ easier to bear.”

That made her smile through her tears. “I can’t argue with that. I’m Anne.”

“Dan,” he said, holding his hand out to shake, then taking hers in a chivalrous manner and turning to the hostess. “If our table is ready…?”

The hostess closed her mouth and nodded. “Of course. Follow me.”

By the time they reached their booth, Anne had stuffed her emotions down enough to look at the menu and place her order with the waitress, but not enough to actually discuss things without breaking down again. Dan instantly understood this, and started talking about himself – how his ex-wife had cheated on him out of feeling neglected because he was a surgeon and his patients came first, and he was disappointed but understood where she was coming from. When he’d confronted her, however, she’d turned nasty and said that he’d deserved it and they hadn’t talked since the divorce finalized. His date had been a tinder match, and he’d called to warn the restaurant he’d be late. They’d let her eat while waiting for him, but when he finally got there, it was just in time to pay for her meal and she’d walked out without a word.

Anne explained tentatively how her fiancé had made a risky choice in his work and the choice she’d been given, and Dan’s eyes widened.

“Eddie,” he repeated. “Eddie Brock? The Carlton Drake interview?”

She nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“So you can’t see him and you’re _living together?”_

“I told him to stay in a hotel for a few days,” she said shakily.

“But that means one of you has to move out _right now_.” Dan said, frowning.

“Me. I’ll move out. If I make him do it, he’ll be homeless by Tuesday. He can’t do laundry before he runs out of socks; he’ll never find an apartment in forty-eight hours.”

Dan took her hands gently in his. “And you can?” he asked quietly.

Her composure dissolved in a rush of fresh tears.

“Anne, Anne, it’s going to be okay,” he soothed. “I have a two-bedroom apartment and the lease renews in a couple of months. I’d been looking for a smaller place after the divorce, but I could bring you on. Rent you the room. Renew the lease as roommates. We can find movers; you can take some of the furniture and leave the rest for Eddie. When’s your lease up?”

“We were going month-to-month,” she sniffled.

“See? It’ll be okay. You give the landlord notice, pay the last month’s rent, and Eddie has a month to find a new place.”

Weakly, she laughed. “More like I have a month to find a new place for Eddie and point him there, but you’re right. You…we just met, you’d really let me move in?”

Dan looked at her, eyebrows wrinkling with concern. “We just met, and you’re _okay_ with moving in?”

“You’re right,” she replied crisply. “I’ll find a sub-letting renter’s agreement.”

 

The weekend passed in a whirlwind of activity. Cleaning, packing, alerting utilities, address changes, all the minutia of moving that had been so shattering when she’d been severing her ties with her former life. But now, moving within the city, they were just another list of things that had to be juggled and she was _good_ at that. So, it turned out, was Dan, and he made himself available as a very capable second set of hands. She split their possessions, having the movers pack Eddie’s for him but stacking the boxes in a corner. Shared possessions got divvied up, his and hers, according to who liked and/or used them more and she left a neatly handwritten, itemized list taped to the stack.

The engagement ring was its own issue.

Eddie had saved his money for _months_ to buy it, foregoing personal indulgences for – actually, Anne had no idea how long he’d been secretly saving up. It had been a total surprise when he’d pulled it out of his pocket, no box to give away the plan before he’d just laid his beating heart in her lap and asked her, completely vulnerable like he expected her to say no, if she would marry him. So by all rights it was his, and selling it would bring in a significant amount of money that he would probably need. But if she just _gave it back_ she’d be saying she no longer _wanted_ to marry him, and that was _not_ the case.

Back and forth she went, weighing the financial practicalities against the emotional impact, but in the end she found a compromise and scrawled a note on the bottom of the list that the engagement ring was in their safe-deposit box, because she couldn’t risk wearing it and she wouldn’t risk just leaving it with the rest of his things. If he needed the money, it was there for him to sell. If not – _hopefully_ not – then once the Life Foundation case was over, he could put it back where it belonged: on her finger.

 

When Monday arrived, Anne was back at the office with a hard determination surrounding her. Everyone knew what had happened, somehow, but no one brought it up with her. They just let her work in peace, gave her space, and quietly admired (and possibly feared) how she was channeling her emotional turmoil into ruthless efficiency.

At the end of the day, she went to Dan’s apartment and cried as she unpacked.

That evening, over Thai take-out, she texted Eddie to let him know that he could go back to the apartment and that he had until the end of next month before he had to move out. When he texted back, it was clear that he considered their relationship over, and she was still crying when Dan got back from his shift at the hospital.

The first week was the hardest. Going to bed alone, waking up alone, living without the familiar chaos of chores left undone. Dan kept his apartment as neat and clean as Eddie didn’t, and he cooked whatever meals his schedule permitted. Anne would wake up to breakfast on the stove waiting for her, or come back after work to dinner in the oven. It was refreshing, honestly, and they had long conversations about Eddie’s inability to cook anything that required the slightest bit of attention or how he seemed physically incapable of just _doing_ a chore without two weeks of nagging first. Dan was a ready and sympathetic ear whether she was voicing frustrations months and years old or crying because she _missed_ Eddie and just _knew_ that he was going to be a wreck without her.

Dan did all the checking she wanted to do but couldn’t let herself; he told her that Eddie had been fired and held her as she cried out of worry that she was going to read about his death in the paper. He promised to keep tabs on Eddie for her, and she focused on her job with an intensity that had Michelinie and McFarlane cautiously expressing encouragement. Every week, she checked the balance of her joint account with Eddie and replaced funds if they’d been used. And at least once a week, Dan let her cry on him.

His hugs lacked the inexplicable magic of Eddie’s.

As the weeks passed, they settled into a smoothly-functional rhythm that she’d never had with Eddie. Chores got done immediately, sometimes even before Anne could do them. Grocery shopping was organized and efficient. They drew up _meal plans_ and never found themselves wondering what to do at dinnertime. Once a week, they went out somewhere nice to eat just to treat themselves for their hard work, and Anne realized with a pang of squirmy guilt that no matter how neatly Eddie had dressed for date night, he always somehow looked like he didn’t belong in a fancy restaurant. Dan _always_ looked like he belonged in a fancy restaurant, even when he was wearing a polo shirt and jeans. In short, he was everything Eddie wasn’t.

But he also _wasn’t_ everything that Eddie _was._

She missed the hugs first. Going to sleep in a bed by herself was like a punishment straight out of the Bible, and even the cat couldn’t fill the void of Eddie’s warmth. Waking up without his arms around her meant she started each day disgruntled and disappointed, something a clean kitchen and hot breakfast didn’t entirely compensate for. But slowly she realized that she just never _smiled_ anymore. Oh, she flashed quick grins to coworkers or Dan, but they were empty social gestures. She never smiled from sheer joy, never grinned until her cheeks hurt, never just fondly beamed. Anne was living in a sleek, orderly world that satisfied some long-neglected parts of her heart, but she wasn’t _happy_. When she and Dan renewed their lease, it felt good and right. Like she was following a path, checking things off a list of How To Be A Successful Woman. But then she’d be folding the clean laundry, slipping fresh pillowcases onto her pillows, and remember the adorable scruffy face of half-awake Eddie and how he called her _perfect_ for bringing him coffee and Dan would find her sitting on her bed with a naked pillow in her arms, crying because it no longer smelled like Eddie.

Couple’s therapy was Dan’s idea.

The therapist was surprised that her new clients not only were there because they wanted to work out the problems they’d had with _past_ partners, but that they weren’t actually dating yet. She approved, though, and together they worked out solutions for things they hadn’t even realized were problems. The therapist pointed out that both of them seemed to be struggling to form emotional attachments with each other out of a sense of duty (on Dan’s part) or trying to fill an emotional void (in Anne’s case). When they went out to dinner that night, they had a long, solemn conversation about whether they wanted to actually try to make a relationship work, their goals, their hopes, and Eddie. That Anne still had feelings for him was no surprise; that he would be the metaphoric elephant in the room of their relationship was a given. Steadily, her hands clasped in his, Dan told her that he neither expected nor wanted her to give up her feelings for Eddie. Whatever happened with them was her business, and he would support her choice. If she wanted to try a relationship, he would do his best with the understanding that he was not the only man in her life, even if the other man wasn’t actually _in_ her life. Obviously, he would prefer if she _didn’t_ seek attention from other men without talking to him first, but he had certain aversions to sharing bodily fluids and he understood if that made her feel unfulfilled.

Eddie was a moot point, Anne told him. Until the Life Foundation case was over, even being seen with Eddie would put her career in jeopardy. Afterwards, yes, she did intend to talk to him and see if there was anything left to rebuild but until then, Dan could rest assured that he had no competition. They went back to the therapist the next week holding hands, determined to build _something_ together, even if it was less a conventional relationship and more an improvisation tailored to each of their emotional needs and abilities. The therapist approved of that.

The big thing Anne got out of therapy was the realization that she needed to stop trying to make people be what she thought they _should_ be, and accept them for who they _were_. Dan would never be into deep kisses, for example, and instead of trying to change that about him, Anne needed to _discuss_ the situation and try to find an alternative they could both be comfortable with. That led to more conversations about Eddie, because she realized that she _hadn’t_ been doing that. It was obvious that Eddie was never going to be the kind of person who saw a chore that needed doing and just _did_ it, and instead of trying to force him to do them when _she_ thought they should be done, she should have been talking with him to figure out a better reminder system or negotiate a different part of the relationship to be responsible for.

_That_ led to the chagrin of realizing that she and Eddie really hadn’t discussed much of _anything_ having to do with their relationship, and that things she’d taken for granted that Eddie understood _might not have been understood at all_. Anne began to focus on interpersonal communication – not just clarifying assumptions or miscommunications, but voicing praise in clear, direct language when someone did something she appreciated. And, on the flip side, voicing criticisms in neutral, non-confrontational language instead of letting them fester into annoyance.

Her co-workers, faced with a resolutely determined Anne who was now engaging in clear and direct communication, were unnerved and inspired into greater efficiency. This did not escape the notice of the partners, who cautiously praised her and congratulated themselves for not letting Drake deprive them of one of their most valuable assets. It was a kind of catharsis for Anne, spinning her emotional turmoil into productivity, turning herself into a kind of living weapon. But her satisfaction was dulled by the fact that she was using her newfound edge for the benefit of the man who had _used_ Eddie to try to cover his fuckups, and then when that failed, had tried to ruin him and her as well.

How could she face Eddie, even after the Life Foundation case was over, knowing that she’d effectively told him she would rather do Drake’s dirty work than marry him? Would he even listen long enough for her to explain, would he still care enough to hear her out, or had she broken his heart and his trust so thoroughly that he wouldn’t want anything to do with her?

Although she and Dan _were_ starting to care about each other as more than friends, exchanging light kisses and occasionally sharing a bed, it was still cold and sterile compared to the spark and warmth she’d had with Eddie, and she still spent nights crying into the pillows that no longer smelled like him.


	2. Six months later...

** Venom **

Six months later, Venom had successfully learned a good deal of the humans’ language despite _still_ not having been able to get inside one. They were absolutely samples to be studied, and the native leader – Drake, or ‘mister Drake’ – was growing frustrated with his trusted lieutenant – Skirth, or ‘doctor Skirth’ – having failed to unravel the secrets of the symbiotes. They had been moved from their small canisters into larger, more sturdy ones and put through a series of tests to determine their nature and needs, but while Skirth had the ‘nature’ pretty well sorted out, she was falling dramatically short on the ‘needs’ aspect. The three symbiotes had been systematically starved with only infrequent offerings of food, small creatures that it had taken a few attempts to figure out how to eat.

The process of eating alarmed the humans, and they spent many hours poking and prodding at the corpses of rats, fish, birds, and other small animals that had been presented and consumed. This, combined with the decrease in mass the symbiotes were experiencing as they starved, led to attempts to find a food supply that was acceptable. Some of the substances were barely edible, with a low amount of the microscopic nuggets of energy contained in the cells of the animals they were offered as hosts – because Venom had learned, listening to Skirth dictate her reports into a recording device, that the humans were attempting to figure out a way for the symbiotes to bond with Earth creatures. Most of the substances were completely devoid of these nuggets. When Venom and xir compatriots ignored or refused these substances, the humans stopped offering them.

Xie still had not figured out a way to communicate with Skirth, and thought it was greatly insulting that they had not been given any tests to determine intelligence. There was no way to tell her _hey, imbecile, give us more creatures._ Venom did what xie could, slowing xir eating down as much as xie could stand and learning how to get control of each small body, studying the openings each rat or rabbit was introduced through with the creature’s own eyes, listening with ears and trying to figure out how to communicate through the body language of an animal that could not speak.

It was slow and frustrating going, and all Venom could be sure of was that xie had established xirself as more intelligent than an animal and less hostile than either of xir companions. This at least led to more frequent feedings, as Skirth attempted to find a creature that was ‘compatible’ as a ‘respiratory host’. More frequent feedings, in turn, meant that Venom – and Phage, and Toxin, because even Riot’s less-clever subordinates could see when their fellow prisoner had figured out how to get more food and followed xir example – was able to rebuild and maintain enough mass that xie could _afford_ to occupy a substandard host and not just devour it.

Today, Drake had come to watch the feeding.

Skirth, somewhat oddly to Venom’s mind, chose _Phage_ for the demonstration. The yellow symbiote was the least patient of the three, and quickest to get bored and either attempt to use xir temporary host to escape or just suck the sweetness out of its organs. Xie had also been most recently fed out of the three and Venom knew, from Skirth dictating to her device, that xir longest period of staying in a host was only half of Venom’s record. But as Venom watched Skirth explain the process to her leader, xie realized that she didn’t _want_ Drake to see everything she had discovered.

Did she not _trust_ her leader? How _interesting_.

As Phage settled into xir rabbit, fed and not yet bored, Drake became excited. “If we do achieve symbiosis, they should be able to survive here, but also, _we_ would…be able to survive _there_ …”

Venom could have laughed. The human thought to _use_ them? He would soon be disappointed. Humans were nothing more than tasty treats wrapped up in a convenient body, as far as Riot’s faction was concerned. They were fuel and vehicle combined, and as soon as one of the symbiotes was able to get into a human, the _fun_ would start.

“We?” Skirth asked.

Drake didn’t answer. “Begin human trials,” he ordered.

“Oh, it’s way too soon to even begin to think about something like-”

“Doctor Skirth, you’re at the forefront of a scientific breakthrough; I need you to hold your nerve. All right?” The words were smooth and firm, denying that the protest had even been made.

“I understand, but it’s an ethical question-”

Drake continued to verbally trample his subordinate. “Think of future generations. Think of your kids.” There was a slightly-ominous pause before he asked in threateningly false concern, “Hey, how _are_ your kids?”

Drake was clearly not taking no for an answer, and Venom curdled in glee. _This_ was why Skirth had chosen Phage – she was attempting to slow her leader’s ambitions. Dissention in the ranks! An opening xie could use, perhaps, to win freedom.

“Let’s begin human trials,” Drake said when it was clear the warning had not been lost on Skirth. “Good work.”

Venom already knew that human trials only meant more of the same, except with bigger meals. From the lack of excitement either of the other two displayed, however, xie was the only one who understood enough human chatter to grasp that they were going to be fed _real_ meals instead of snacks filled with smaller snacks, and xie was determined to eat _very_ slowly. The more xie could learn about humans from the inside, the quicker the fun would begin and then…

…heads in one pile, bodies in another.

 

Skirth had chosen Toxin to receive the first human meal, perhaps hoping that catastrophic failure would deter Drake. Venom couldn’t hear what speech the human leader was giving to his subordinates from the containment canister in xir new secure cell, but xie could watch as a human was marched into Toxin’s. At first, nothing happened. Drake was talking to the walking meal, either threatening or cajoling. Then the canister opened, and Toxin surged out towards xir victim.

Drake was elated as the symbiote vanished inside the other human, but Venom snickered to xirself because that emotion was _wildly_ premature. Toxin was merely settling in to eat. The interesting thing, Venom noted, was that in the moments before all the tasty bits were ripped out of his flesh, the human didn’t seem to be aware that he had a passenger.

Then, of course, Toxin sucked all the sweetness out of xir meal and hurled xirself at the barrier between xir and their captor in a show of furious defiance. _I’ll eat you,_ xie was snarling wordlessly. _We’ll eat all of you_.

Calmly, Drake watched the writhing form so eager to eat him from the inside out. Then, to Skirth’s silent horror, he ordered the next meal delivered.

This time, he didn’t stick around to watch the results of his orders. He left the area, secure in the knowledge that his lieutenant would carry out his commands, and Venom watched as Phage, too, was fed. The problem of how to get the symbiotes back into their canisters was easily solved; Skirth had figured out months ago that they were…uncomfortable…being in this planet’s atmosphere without a host, and the symbiotes in turn had been taught that their canisters would be flooded with a less-reactive gas once they were inside. No matter how much the other two raged at the tasty meals just on the other side of the clear walls, they eventually crawled back into their containment modules and allowed themselves to be safely contained.

Then, and only then, was Venom offered a meal.

Xie kept xir body language as non-aggressive as possible, crawling hesitantly towards the man with pauses to surge upwards in the way that had seemed to endear the humans toward xir, as if xie had a head to cock curiously at them. The man was no different, and he calmly extended one hand in a tentatively friendly gesture. Venom entered through that hand, slipping smoothly into the body that released no flood of alarmed chemical compounds at the intruder. It was tempting, so tempting being surrounded by sweetness just begging to be sucked out, but Venom resisted. Patience now would yield great reward later, and xie took xir time getting comfortable.

When the man was still alive at the end of a minute, Skirth’s subordinates relaxed. At the end of five, they smiled and congratulated themselves. After ten, Skirth dismissed them.

“How do you feel?” she asked the man, who shuffled nervously closer to the barrier.

“How’m I supposed to feel?” he responded. “Okay, I guess. I don’t feel nothin’. Hungry, maybe.”

Human bodies weren’t all that different from rabbits, Venom thought. Arms and legs moved roughly the same, organs were mostly the same, things were just arranged in new configurations. Eyesight was different, focused in one direction but more accurate. Hearing was worse. But speech – that would take time to learn. Skirth checked her equipment and asked the man meaningless questions to keep him calm – who he was, where he’d come from, how he’d managed to wind up in such a state that he would volunteer for this project. Venom paid attention to how the man responded, feeling out the mechanics for xirself, and then contemplated how to go about eating this _splendid_ meal. Xie didn’t want to do it all at once, and give the (correct) impression that xie was just feeling out how humans worked, but xie also didn’t want to risk killing the man and letting his cells with their sweet nuggets die before xie got to eat them. Xie was also feeling more than a little disgruntled that Drake was offering them slaves who were desperate enough to face certain death; killing them would be no fun, and while the other two wouldn’t care, Venom _did_. Xie had been mocked enough times in the past for _sympathizing_ with members of a host race, treating them as equals rather than lesser creatures, but it didn’t change anything in xir mind. Ripping apart helpless captives just wasn’t _fun_.

The man got tired after a few hours and lay down on the floor to sleep. Skirth, by contrast, looked more alert. Venom decided to start with the muscles, feasting slowly while xie could hear Skirth muttering readings out loud. Then xie sucked the nuggets of energy out of the man’s organs, one by one, while Skirth sounded more and more alarmed. The man’s body started reacting at that point, all his remaining organs freaking out, and Venom hurriedly finished xir meal and exited the cooling corpse to slither obediently back into xir containment module.

Once it had hissed shut and all the oxygen, as the humans called the reactive gas, had been sucked out, Skirth entered the little room – but she did not go to the body. She went to the canister.

“You’re trying, aren’t you,” she said in a tone that wasn’t quite a question. “You’re trying to bond. You’re trying to show me what you need. You could have killed that man at any time, but you waited until he fell asleep. That was either kindness or cunning, and you’re either the least-dangerous one compared to your friends…or the most.”

She put her hand on the canister, the way Drake had put his hand on the barrier between himself and Toxin’s meal. Venom surged up to press against the barrier in an echo of how the doomed human had put his hand out to mirror Drake’s, then pulled back.

“You saw that?” murmured Skirth. “That means you saw the way your friends reacted and _chose_ to approach less aggressively.” She pulled her hand away, then held both of them over the canister. “You’ll each get another volunteer tomorrow. My hope is that your friends will stay in their hosts, since they’ve just been fed.” One hand settled on the surface. “But I suspect they’ll just eat the volunteers to build up their strength.”

The other hand settled onto the canister’s surface as well. Skirth was giving xir a way to answer by offering xir two targets to reach towards…and possibly test if Venom was able to understand her.

Venom surged up to mock-touch the second hand, throwing support behind the idea that xir companions would just eat the humans offered to them.

Skirth gasped.

 

“I’ve crunched some numbers,” Skirth announced to her subordinates the next morning, making sure that her voice was broadcast into each symbiote’s holding cell. “The symbiotes’ mass increased after each failed host, but within five days decreased back to original levels. Given the increase each of them registered after failing to bond with a human host, I believe their mass will take nine days to return to original levels. Therefore, we will introduce each of them to a volunteer today and then not attempt a second one for five days.”

It was a test, Venom realized. A test to see if the symbiotes were listening and capable of understanding that this would be the only meal they got for five days. A test to see if they were able to control themselves and not simply devour the offered human. Three sacrifices were brought in; three tasty meals ushered into three holding chambers. Three containment modules opened. Two symbiotes surged out and rushed their victims; two humans screamed and panicked and died. Venom slithered out slowly and waited for xir human – a woman, this time – to notice xir. Hesitantly, tentatively, xie approached and gently merged with xir offered host.

The next three days were both interesting and boring. Sure, xie learned how to control a human body and was navigating the complex structure of the brain and the mechanisms of speech, but xie had to keep xir activity to a minimum and not eat all the delicious sweetness that surrounded xir. Skirth stayed late for chats and came in early, but the monitoring equipment never slept and Venom had no intentions of tipping xir hand. The woman’s name was Rebecca and she was most assuredly _not_ a compatible host; when the bonding process didn’t start within a few hours, Venom knew she was nothing more than food. Xie could use her like a puppet, but xie couldn’t blend properly. There would be no communication, no flow of information. Xie was trading the containment module for one made of flesh, and after three days, xie carefully sucked some of the sweetness out of the host who hadn’t been given a choice in the matter and left her sitting dazed in a corner while xie slithered back into xir canister.

Skirth was alarmed and confused by this, and Rebecca was ushered out. Venom hoped she’d be released when it was clear she was unsuitable as a host.

Two days later, they were each given another human. Venom’s was named Richard. This time, Phage and Toxin had figured out they had to make their meal last and didn’t eat right away. Phage’s host turned out to be compatible and started reacting after two hours – elevated temperature, organs going crazy – and Skirth’s subordinates swarmed in alarm, but not as much alarm as the host Phage was bonding to. She banged on the walls and cried to be let out, cried for help, cried for death, and then started slamming her head against the wall until Phage lost patience and ate her.

Toxin got bored the next day and ate xir host.

Venom gambled that Drake would order more humans if none of them successfully bonded to their hosts and snacked on Richard before slithering out in clear rejection. Again, xir rejected host was ushered out and the bodies of the other two were hauled away, and the next day three new victims were shoved into the holding cells. This time, Drake came down to yell at Skirth. She tried to explain – at least partially – what was going on, but he would hear none of it. He grasped that the symbiotes could roughly understand what was said and yelled directly at the hosts, informing their passengers with no uncertainty that if they did not bond, there would be _consequences_.

In three days, Toxin and Phage got fed up with sitting in unacceptable hosts and ate them. Venom also left xir host, a woman named Maria, and returned to xir containment module. Skirth’s subordinates entered the chambers, but while the unsuitable hosts were taken away, the canisters were also moved. Phage and Toxin were ejected from their canisters into smaller observation cells with new humans, but through a portal that closed. If they ate their hosts, there would be no containment module to retreat to. Venom was similarly ejected into an observation cell, but instead of a new potential host, xie found Maria waiting.

“I’m so sorry,” Skirth said once they were alone. “Drake said…he said that you _chose_ to leave your hosts, so he thinks you _could_ bond but you’re refusing. This isn’t right, but I don’t know what to do…”

It was the first time she’d talked directly to Venom since the night xie’d eaten xir first human.

“Get Eddie,” Maria said, hugging her knees and rocking. Having Skirth talk to the symbiote inside her was freaking her out more than _having_ the symbiote inside her. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Eddie?” Skirth frowned in confusion.

“Eddie Brock. He’s a reporter, a good one. Good guy. Gives me money. I saw him on TV a few months back with your boss, talking about the rockets.”

Skirth nodded. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised.

 

** Anne **

When the Uber driver pulled up to their apartment after dinner, there was a man standing on the sidewalk just staring at their door. The headlights showed battered jeans, an oversized hoodie, and ratty sneakers – not much to go on, but Anne’s heart leaped into fight-or-flight.

“Who the hell?” Dan asked rhetorically, but Anne was already climbing out of the car.

“Eddie?”

The man turned. It _was_ Eddie, and he looked like either he’d been chasing a story for six months solid, or he really _was_ hopeless about eating if no one reminded him.

She wanted to launch herself into his arms, smell his skin, and kiss his scruffy face until her lips bled.

She wanted to climb back into the car and deny she was ever there.

“Hey,” he said, and then the dress she was wearing registered. _“Whoa.”_

No. No, this was not the time to smile, she couldn’t afford to smile, oh god she missed him so bad.

“Annie, the landlord gave me your forwarding address when you moved out, I-”

“I can’t see you, Eddie,” she blurted. “I’ll get fired.”

“You won’t see me,” he promised, and then his pleading expression turned to vulnerable hurt as Dan came around the car.

“This is Dan,” she said, her voice sounding hollow to her ears. “Dan, this is Eddie.”

“Great to meet you,” Dan said pleasantly, hand outstretched for Eddie to shake. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Eddie shook, but looked skeptical. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Dan wasn’t fazed. “I was sorry to hear the network fired you. I loved _The Brock Report._ Can’t believe no one else picked you up.”

“Yeah, well, Drake…” Eddie grimaced.

“I know. And I’ll perjure myself swearing you weren’t here, if I have to, but I’ll just go inside and let you two catch up.” Dan turned to her. “Good?”

She nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Really nice to meet you finally,” Dan said with a friendly clap on the shoulder.

Eddie stammered out insincere agreement. A brief, chaste kiss for her, and then Dan was inside, leaving her on the sidewalk with the man she did and did not want to hug desperately.

“Annie…”

The sound of her name sent her heart climbing into her throat, because that was the completely open expression, the utterly vulnerable tone Eddie had used when he’d asked her to marry him.

“I just want to ask…are you alright?”

Her heart fell back into her stomach. It sounded like he was saying, _I just need to know in case what I’m about to do gets me killed,_ and her hands were suddenly cupping his cheeks, their faces intimately close.

“Eddie,” she said softly, “whatever story you’re chasing, go get it. Be strong. Believe in yourself. I lo-”

 _I love you_ hung between them, unsaid. Eddie’s forehead wrinkled as if he were asking, _Do you really?_ Anne hesitated, then nodded. She couldn’t say it, but she couldn’t hide it either.

“I’ll be okay,” she finished, thumbs brushing his cheeks. She wanted to tell him how badly she missed him. She wanted to hug him tight and not let go. She wanted to apologize, to beg his forgiveness, but the words all stuck in her throat and brought tears to her eyes.

“That’s all I needed,” he said quietly, taking her hands down and holding them in his.

They were very warm.

 _I love you,_ said his eyes.

Then she was alone, watching him walk away, and she hurried into the apartment and cried her eyes out on Dan’s shoulder because Eddie was _suffering_ and it was all her fault. She should have stood by him. She should have quit the firm, bit the bullet and stuck with him to start over somewhere else but she _couldn’t_ , she couldn’t make herself, and now Eddie was going to get himself killed and there was nothing she could do.

 

** Venom **

It had been three days since Venom had been forced back into a half-eaten host. Skirth chatted with Maria a handful of times a day as she took readings, but nothing about Eddie and she didn’t address Venom directly. Phage and Toxin’s hosts were suffering as the symbiotes slowly snacked on them. The hosts were given dead material to eat, but it did nothing to restore the tasty little nuggets inside their cells and the symbiotes were getting both restless and desperate. Their half-eaten meals wouldn’t last forever, and none of them knew if Drake would provide another.

Finally, as the symbols on Phage’s cell changed to show that xie had been in xir host for four days, the yellow symbiote snapped. Xie used the last of the host’s strength to puppet the human body, attempting to break the clear wall with anything available including the host’s own limbs, but all xie managed to do was trigger some sort of alarm. Sound, deadly in both range and volume, shrilled through the floor and both Venom and Toxin withdrew from a full merge to cower, shivering, in the body cavities of their hosts. When the sound ended they blended again, shaken and weak, to see that Phage’s host had died of its wounds and Phage xirself had died to the vibrations that had shaken xir apart.

This was the end, the expressions of their hosts said silently as they were forced to look at each other. If they didn’t escape, they would die.

 

A few hours later, Maria’s ears picked up sound too quiet for the human to interpret. She remained in her balled-up state, rocking with the beat of her heart, while Venom listened.

“…the security system off,” Skirth said distantly. “No one will know you were here. You’ll have an hour before it turns back on. Get whatever evidence you need; I’ll distract the security guard.”

Footsteps wandered around, sometimes slow and uncertain, sometimes with urgency and purpose. Maria continued to hug her knees, rocking, as the footsteps approached. Venom forced her head up as the footsteps began to retreat, urging xir half-dead host into alertness.

It worked; Maria lunged at the door and began pounding desperately on it, attracting the attention of the intruder who hurried back to see what the noise was.

“Eddie!” she shouted. “Eddie! It’s me! Let me out!”

“Maria? Maria!” Recognition bloomed on his face, horror overtaking disbelief.

“Please, let me out!”

“I don’t know how to get you…” he protested as she repeated her frantic pleas. “I don’t know…”

He prodded the keypad on the door, but nothing happened. Frantic now as well, he grabbed a metal canister of some sort off the wall and began slamming it into the door. Maria recoiled as it cracked and shattered, and her weakened heart faltered.

Venom panicked and puppeted her failing body, lunging at the man and knocking him to the ground, fending off his flailing hands and surging from xir dying host into the living one. Being surrounded by so much sweetness was overwhelming after being starved for seven days and xie sucked some of it out, just enough to feel alert, and took over the body of the human apparently named Eddie.

Security system off. One hour. How much time was left? Cover xir tracks. Venom stalked through the scientific facility, lashing out with tendrils of xir body and destroying security cameras, random equipment, inconsequential clear walls, anything that looked important or messy. Hide the evidence of an intruder. Eventually, xie came to a door that xir host recognized the sight of: the door he’d entered through.

Shit, the host was compatible.

Hurrying faster now, Venom forced the man’s body to re-trace his path into the facility and hid in a truck leaving. The truck came to a stop somewhere, Venom didn’t know where, and xie puppeted xir host out and began running. Xie had to find a new host before the bonding process reached the point of being irreversible because xie was getting memories from Eddie, now. Memories about Maria. He’d been contacted by Skirth and agreed to come in out of concern for Maria, who’d been living on the streets and gone missing. He’d risked his life for that other human, and Venom had killed her. The chances of him welcoming the symbiote who had killed his friend were slim, and Venom found xirself reluctant to just _eat_ the first evidence xie’d gotten that humans actually had compassion for each other.

That humanity was something more than just food and fun.

Day was dawning; Venom hurried along, sniffing at men and women on the street, searching for one that would be compatible because xie needed more information about humans. Xie needed to hide, to regain xir strength before Drake – or worse, Riot – could hunt xir down.

There!

A woman in a suit, striding confidently into a building. She would be compatible. Venom forced Eddie’s body to scale the side of the building and push a window open. Then xie left xir host curled up in the open cage of rusty metal clinging to the outside wall and slithered inside, sniffing the air currents to find xir new host.

 

** Anne **

Anne stepped out of the courthouse feeling accomplished. Although technically not open for another hour and a half, she’d been able to get inside and make contact with her friend to hand off some paperwork and now she felt…

Hungry.

Really, _really_ hungry.

Picking up the pace, she stepped into a bagel shop and ordered a smoothie with as much fresh fruit as they could cram into it, one high-heeled foot tapping impatiently as the blender whirred. She sipped as she walked, but the cup was empty before she reached the end of the block and not only was she even _more_ hungry, but she was craving…something. Something raw, something that would give her energy, lots of energy. She stepped into a small grocery store and headed to the deli, where they were preparing the grab-and-go foods for the day. Five minutes and one lame excuse about lunch for the office later, she was walking back out with eight packages of freshly-made sushi.

The weirdest thing, Anne thought as she sat on a park bench and opened the first one, wasn’t even that she normally didn’t care one way or the other for sushi. No, the weirdest thing was that she was _picking all the raw fish out_ and leaving the rice for the birds.

Actually, scratch that. The weirdest thing was that the flock of pigeons gobbling up her offerings looked _really tasty_.

Maybe she was just overworked. Maybe she should take the afternoon off and have lunch with Dan before his shift at the hospital started that evening. Yeah, that sounded good. Stuffing raw fish into her mouth with one hand, she texted him to make reservations for eleven-thirty.

 

** Dr. Skirth **

This was it, Dora Skirth thought as she surveyed the wreckage of the lab. She was going to die.

She hadn’t _thought_ she’d left Eddie alone that long, and her watch confirmed it had only been about twenty minutes, but _someone_ or some _thing_ had made a near-complete mess of the lab in that time. One of the symbiotes was dead, one was still in its cell with its host, and the last one…the one she’d pegged as displaying either mercy or self-serving altruism…

The last one was missing, and all evidence pointed towards it having _escaped_.

Drake was _furious_.

No one had been there to monitor the symbiotes overnight; the two lab techs who had been scheduled were discovered hung over in a store room and fired immediately. Luckily, whoever had damaged the lab equipment had also managed to take out the fuse box for the security system, so Dora’s transgression hadn’t been discovered…but that also meant no one knew how symbiote A01 had escaped, particularly since its host had been found dead on the floor outside the shattered door to its cell.

Drake ordered a sweep of the building, which took the better part of two hours and turned up exactly nothing. Personnel logs were checked and double-checked, but everyone was accounted for and Dora herself had the security guard – and surveillance footage of her talking to him – as an alibi. She was put to work reviewing the hard copies of the lab’s security cameras – what there was of it – to figure out what had happened, and she used that freedom to frantically text Eddie and let him know what was going on, that one of the symbiotes had escaped, that they were searching for it, and _where the hell was he?_

He didn’t text her back.

When she found the footage of symbiote A03’s death and realized that the sound of the security alarm had killed it – the way A02 and A01’s hosts reacted strongly suggested that it _was_ the sound, because A03 was dead before its host – she quietly destroyed the footage and lied, saying that it had been too damaged to get anything.

Be very, very, _very_ afraid, Eddie had told her when he relayed how Drake’s influence had kept him out of work and cost him his fiancée. Well, she was not only very, very, _very_ afraid but wise enough to know that Drake would kill her if he found out about her part in all this, so she salvaged a part of the security system and wired it up to a crude switch with a battery. She still didn’t know if A01 was the least-dangerous or the most, but if it came to her against a symbiote, she wasn’t going down without a fight.

Dr. Emerson hurried up and ushered Drake away, to A02’s cell, where the host’s blood pressure and liver functions had returned to normal. Drake was elated, claiming the host’s body needed time to adjust, but Dora knew better. Six months of studying the corpses of failed hosts had revealed one interesting fact: every single one of them, their cells had ruptured and all the mitochondria they should have contained had been removed. A02 had been in that young man for four days and had to be getting desperately hungry. The host would die soon, and the symbiote would need to be fed.

Actually, when all the data was run with an eye towards hosts being food, there had only been a handful of hosts where she thought actual symbiotic bonding had been taking place and she wondered if A01 had eaten Eddie, or if they had bonded.

As Drake stormed off, a thought shook Dora to her core and left her hyperventilating. One of the symbiotes had gone missing in the crash. One of the astronauts had survived, but never made it to a hospital. The ambulance had suffered a crash, and the astronaut was dead. At the time, they had thought the symbiote just hadn’t survived, but Dora knew better now. She knew how easily one of them could slip into a human host undetected. Symbiote A04 was alive, and it had escaped long before anyone knew where to look for it.

There was a symbiote on the loose. It had been free to kill and eat for six months, and _no one knew where it was_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the movie forgets about Riot for six months. He's just...chilling in an old woman doing nothing, apparently.


	3. Fancy meeting you here

** Anne…? **

The morning passed in relative peace, except for how _thirsty_ Anne was. Whoever stocked the vending machine was certainly making their money off of her today; she must have bought half a dozen bottles of juice out of that thing and she couldn’t stop thinking about the sushi she’d had for breakfast. Eleven couldn’t come fast enough, even with how hard she was working to get her workload under control in the three hours she’d be there today.

As the clock struck eleven, though, she started to feel lightheaded. Dan looked worried as she climbed in, particularly when she cranked the air conditioning and aimed all the vents at herself, but she assured him she was fine. Just overworked.

She didn’t mention the sushi.

Once they got out of the car and its lovely air conditioning, Anne felt like she was going to melt and the short walk into the restaurant felt like crossing a desert. Fortunately, they were ushered to their table right away and she asked for a pitcher of ice water before even looking at the menu. The waiter asked if they’d like to start with an appetizer, and Anne wasn’t aware that she’d ordered the fresh oysters until he was walking away and Dan was looking at her curiously and saying something she didn’t hear.

“What?” she asked, tearing her gaze away from the lobster tank.

“I said, are you feeling alright?” he repeated with concern.

She waved it off. “Yeah, just tired. And hot. And thirsty.”

“And craving raw seafood. That’s not like you, Anne.”

She didn’t have an answer for that. When the waiter returned, she ordered the lobster.

Her oysters, when they arrived, were _heavenly_ – which was odd, because Anne had never even wanted to try them before, but maybe she should have them more often. Between them and the water, she was feeling more solid, and she and Dan chatted about their days and the possibility of renting a movie that weekend. Then the vertigo struck, and she felt like she was burning up. The temptation to pour the pitcher of ice water over her head was making her fingers itch, and she lost the ability to focus on anything Dan was saying. Every little motion caught her attention; every sound was a distraction clanging in her ears.

And then Eddie walked in the door.

If anything, he looked _even worse_ than last night, like he’d slept in his clothes and then run a couple of miles in them, and all she could think as he caught sight of her and made a beeline for their table was… _no_.

“No,” she declared, like she could change reality on her say-so. “No, no, _no, no, no!”_

“Annie!” Eddie crouched by their table, startling Dan. “No, I have to tell you something.”

“You can’t be here,” she moaned. “I can’t see you.”

“-broke into the Life Foundation-”

“Nononononononononononono…”

“Your office told me you were here,” he was saying over her incoherent protests. “You’re the only person that I trust. I think I may have been infected. Hey, are you feeling okay?”

Anne was not, in fact, feeling okay. She was feeling like she was a passenger in her own body, and everything was somehow distant and unreal, like a dream. Dan put a hand to her forehead and announced that she was ‘burning up’ which made no sense because there wasn’t any fire, and then the waiter was setting a plate in front of her and saying it was her lobster.

It was bright red.

“This is _dead!”_ she exclaimed, loudly and with every bit of indignation she could muster.

Dan and Eddie exchanged alarmed looks as other patrons turned to see what was going on and the waiter looked greatly offended. He _should_ be offended, Anne thought, serving her a _dead_ lobster.

Unsteadily, she pushed her chair back and stood. “Dead!” she shouted, ignoring protests as she stalked towards the tank full of delectable live crustaceans. Some of the people who worked there tried to stop her, but she pushed them out of the way. “Dead,” she accused them as she climbed in, the cool water quenching her too-hot flesh. Someone was saying something about police. Someone was saying ‘ambulance’. A lobster crawled over her foot, tasty crunchy treat, and she snatched it out of the water to crunch it between her teeth and suck out the sweet, gooey insides.

 

She was in a car. She was wet, and she was in a car. The wet made her cold, but not cold enough to quench the hot tearing at her. Anne frowned and looked over to discover Eddie in the back seat with her.

“Hey,” she said vaguely, feeling like there was a _reason_ this shouldn’t be happening, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was.

“Hey,” he replied cautiously. “How are you feeling, Annie?”

“I’m wet.”

“That’s because you climbed into the lobster tank,” he told her, laughter bubbling in his voice. “Why’d you do that, Annie?”

“The food was dead,” she pouted.

He was so far away. Why was he so far away? She struggled against her own rubbery limbs until she managed to flop over and cuddle up to him, feeling his warmth and smelling the scent of his skin.

Much better.

“So,” Eddie said, one arm curling around her. “The food was dead. _Shouldn’t_ it be dead? I mean, they say you shouldn’t consume raw shellfish…”

“Food should be alive,” she told him sulkily. “Alive and sweet. Like you. You’re sweet.” She peered up at him, feeling her eyes go…weird. “You look familiar.”

For just a second, Eddie looked alarmed. Then he smiled. “I _should_. We were gonna get married, Annie.”

“Yeah.” The thought filled her with warmth. Not the heat that seared her, but gentle warmth because this was _Eddie_ , and she _loved_ him, and she _missed_  him.

Shakily, she pushed herself up to press her lips against his, her mouth moving hungrily in ways it hadn’t for so long. Then she melted back down to press her face into his neck and just soak up the warmth of his love, one hand absently rubbing his leg.

“You have good legs,” she murmured. “Very strong. Thank you.”

“You’re scaring me, Annie,” he replied, but his arm tightened around her.

 

** Venom **

The bonding process was going well.

Venom wasn’t able to do a true merge yet, but that was coming. Xir host, Anne, had managed to find food that actually helped xir regain xir strength before the process started in earnest, which was a _huge_ help in the early stages. When her body started truly reacting to xir presence, she was out with her mate seeking more food, and then the weirdest thing happened.

 _Eddie_ walked in.

Somehow, without having access to _either_ of their memories, Venom had managed to find the one human who was possibly _the most important_ person to Eddie, the human who had been instrumental to Venom gaining xir freedom, and chose her as xir host. Seeing Eddie made Anne’s body release a confusing flood of chemicals – she was intensely emotionally attached to him, but at the same time, _terrified_ – and of course, it was _then_ that they reached the stage of her being able to pick up on input from xir.

Between her body’s reaction to the bonding and the things she did to try to treat the symptoms, Anne quickly lost coherency and was bundled into a vehicle for transport to a medical facility, if Venom was following correctly. Xie had no idea if human instruments could detect xir, so this was going to be interesting. _More_ interesting was that Anne felt far stronger emotions for Eddie than she did for the man who was, to judge by everyone’s actions, her mate. There was a story there, and once the bonding had gotten further, xie was _absolutely_ going looking for it.

At the medical facility, Anne was brought into a small room where her mate started up a machine and grabbed an instrument that was attached to it. He told Eddie something that made no sense because Venom didn’t understand the terminology on xir own yet, and then pressed the instrument to Anne’s flesh and _PAIN!!_

The symbiote flinched, violently, taking Anne’s body along for the ride because that instrument was pumping out _very_ painful frequencies of intense sound. Eddie lunged, holding Anne’s body down as Dan ran the instrument up her torso and Venom fled before it, away from the slicing, shredding sound, surging into xir former unwilling host with unnerving ease.

Xie was going to have to be _very_ careful xie didn’t bond with _two_ hosts. That wouldn’t end well _at all_.

There was no time for subtlety; Venom took control of Eddie’s body and flexed, attempting speech for the first time.

“ **Stop that,** ” xie snarled. “ **It _hurts_.**”

 _What was that?_ Eddie demanded silently. _What’s going on?_

 **Sorry,** Venom replied directly into his mind. **I need a meat puppet. This should only take a minute.**

“ **Stop touching her with that,** ” xie continued out loud, glaring at Dan. “ **What are you even trying to accomplish? You’re interrupting the bonding process!** ”

The instrument fell from Dan’s hands and struck the floor before being pulled back towards the machine by its cord. “I- what? Eddie, what bonding process?”

“ **Do not use that instrument on her again. I am not going to harm her. She is a very compatible host-** ”

“HOST?!”

_HOST??_

“- **yes, host! Trust me, I am _very_ invested in her continued well-being. Now, if you can refrain from using that instrument, I will return to her and we can continue our discussion while I resume our bonding.**”

Dan looked helpless. “I…guess. I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t suffered any intestinal damage from eating lobster shell…”

“ ** _She_ didn’t eat it. _I_ did.**”

Internally, Venom said, **You really do have good legs. I apologize for the death of your friend Maria. Anne loves you very much,** xie added, because it had seemed highly important to Anne that Eddie know that. Then xie surged back down Eddie’s arms and into Anne again.

Eddie pulled away with a gasp once his body was back under his own control, and Dan looked back and forth between them as Venom flexed control over Anne’s body to sit cautiously up.

“So,” he started, his voice shaking. “Who are…you?”

“ **In your language, my name translates to ‘Venom’. I am not from your world.** ”

“You don’t say,” Eddie joked weakly.

Dan took a deep breath. “And you are…bonding with Anne?”

“ **I am,** ” Venom confirmed. “ **She is a very compatible host. My species bonds with others to survive. I, and two others of my kind, have spent the last six months as prisoners of the one you know as Drake.** ”

“Oh _shit_ ,” breathed Eddie. “ _You’re_ what was on that rocket of his when it crashed. But I saw- you said two others, but there was only one other…host. The third one…”

“ **Phage grew desperate,** ” Venom said dryly. “ **In attempting to force an escape, the alarm was triggered. Our species is very vulnerable to certain frequencies of sound. Phage was killed by the alarm.** ” Annoyed at the sudden hole xie realized existed in xir grasp of human language, xie asked, “ **What are the pronouns you use to describe those who are neither male humans nor female humans?** ”

Both Eddie and Dan stopped in confusion and looked at each other.

“English doesn’t…really have gender-neutral pronouns,” Dan said awkwardly. “Other languages, German…”

“There’s a lot of people who aren’t comfortable with standard gendered pronouns,” Eddie added with a shrug. “Some use the singular they – they, them, themselves – which can be confusing sometimes because it’s usually a plural, and some just make up their own pronouns, but since there’s no standard, nothing’s really seamless.” He blinked. “Ohhhhh. Of course. You’re aliens, you don’t conform to our standard gender ideas and you don’t know what pronouns to use.”

“ **Exactly.** ”

“Well, uh, you can…you know…they, or make up some pronouns of your own, or- I mean, I don’t know how you feel about using gendered pronouns but you can always just pick one…”

_What did I wake up to? Am I dreaming about an alien in my body picking pronouns with my ex?_

**You are not dreaming. I am an alien, in your body, and your language lacks pronouns appropriate to my species.**

Anne thought about that, sifting through xir shared memories. _Well, if you want my suggestion, I’d go with male._

**Interesting. What is your reasoning?**

Instead of words, she sent a flood of memories on the disparity of how human females were treated by their own culture compared to human males, and the irony of an agender alien not being taken seriously because it was being forced into an ill-fitting gender role.

 **I am outraged on your behalf,** Venom said silently. **But your reasoning is sound.**

“ **I have chosen ‘male’ pronouns,** ” Venom announced, “ **and I am disgusted with how your culture demeans females without reason.** ”

“You and me both,” Eddie muttered. “So, uh…how’s Annie doing? Can we…like…talk to her?”

“No more ultrasound,” Dan promised, both hands raised.

Venom relaxed control and watched from behind Anne’s eyes as she looked around, taking in the medical surroundings and processing her memories.

“I ate a lobster?”

Dan and Eddie both let out relieved chuckles.

“Technically,” Dan said, “Venom ate the lobster. But he did it with your body. How does your mouth feel?”

“Fine. But I’m hungry,” she answered. “Not for lobster. I just want some cookies or something.”

“There’s a vending machine in the staff area,” Dan told Eddie. “I’ll have her moved into an observation room for the moment if you’ll stay with her while I get her something to eat.”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie agreed.

**You love him. Why are you so afraid when you look at him?**

_Drake got him fired and tried to get me fired, too. If he finds out I’ve talked to him…_

**I will bite his head off. He imprisoned and starved me; I have no love for him.**

_I’m not sure if that’s comforting or terrifying._

Anne was moved to a different small room, where she sat on a paper-covered bed next to Eddie and held his hand somewhat desperately while he told her about his morning.

“…so I start banging on the door with a fire extinguisher, right? And the thing finally shatters, and Maria…”

**She was dying. I did not wish to die with her.**

Anne squeezed his hand. “Venom says she was dying. _Drake_ killed her, Eddie. It wasn’t your fault.”

“She lunged at me – well, I guess that was Venom, right? – anyway, the next thing I know I’m six floors up the side of the courthouse, _on the fire escape,_ and I feel like I’ve been running for hours. I’m starving, I’m dehydrated, I hurt all over, I have _no idea_ how I got there, and Dr. Skirth’s been blowing up my phone with texts panicking about how I disappeared and someone trashed the lab and one of the symbiotes is _missing_ and Drake is pissed and I figure… _shit, it’s in me_.”

**I _was_. The assumption was not incorrect.**

Anne nuzzled his neck. “You weren’t wrong. He _was_ in you.”

Eddie took a breath and continued. “So I make my way home and eat everything in my fridge – and I mean that, I was drinking expired salad dressing from the bottle and chowing down on pickles. And then I threw up because I drank expired salad dressing and ate an entire bag of barely-thawed tater tots, and I brushed my teeth and drank some tap water and crashed out for a few hours.”

“When Dan gets back with those cookies, you need to have some of them,” she told him. “You haven’t been eating.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I know.”

The familiarity of the exchange alarmed Venom. **Wait. He regularly neglects to make sure he is getting an acceptable amount of sustenance?**

 _Yeah, he’s pretty hopeless when he’s focused on something._ Her silent words dripped with tender affection and the desire to curl up with him and feed both herself and Eddie.

Venom started to suspect that when Riot finally found them, things were going to get _messy_ , because xie had no intention of letting xir ‘leader’ hurt either of these humans.

 

** Dr. Skirth **

“Dr. Skirth, thank you for joining us.”

In the door to her office, Dora froze at the sight of Carlton Drake sitting on the corner of her desk with his head-of-security thug standing behind him. I was wrong, she thought. _This_ is when I die.

“We repaired the security system and reviewed the footage,” Drake said lightly, “and guess what we found?” He slid off the desk to walk towards her with all the menace of a panther. “You, conspiring with the newly-deceased host of our most promising symbiote to bring in _that man_.”

“I never-”

That’s as far as she got, because Drake lunged at her and came away with her phone in his hands, fingers working over the screen that hadn’t yet locked from the last time she’d texted Eddie.

“Please answer me,” he read accusingly. “Your life is in danger. Now, how would you know that, Dr. Skirth, if you haven’t been conspiring with him to steal _my symbiote?”_

Instead of waiting for her to answer, he put the phone back in her hands and pulled her over to the desk.

“Call him,” he ordered. “Call him, right now, and get him to tell you where he is, or Treece here is going to blow your brains out.”

Trembling, she pressed the call button.

“Speakerphone,” Drake snapped.

She touched the speakerphone button.

_“Dr. Skirth! Hey, uh, look, I’ve been meaning to get back to you…”_

“Eddie,” she said, trying to sound not completely terrified. “Did you get my texts?”

_“Yeah, I did, but listen – I’m fine, alright? I’m not going into organ failure or anything, I’m just really, really tired and hungry.”_

That was to be expected in the first twenty-four hours, but Dora suspected he was already suffering organ damage. Not that she was going to say anything like that in front of Drake, who already looked excited at the prospect of A01 having found a suitable host.

“Eddie, where are you?”

_“It’s okay, I’m resting and eating.”_

“How do you feel? Aside from tired and hungry.”

_“Just tired and hungry, really. Oh, and, well, I kinda ache all over.”_

“I want to run some tests,” Dora insisted. “It will just take a few minutes. Where should I meet you?”

_“Oh, hold on, I gotta check…”_

Muffled sounds; Eddie had covered the phone and was speaking to someone. Treece looked uncomfortably excited.

_“Okay, uh, V- …the s- …what was that? Can you write it- okay, never mind. Um. Yeah. You can come over, sure, I’ll meet you at my apartment.”_

Drake was gesturing angrily at her.

“Meet you at- are you _not_ at your apartment now?”

_“No, I’m…out. Getting food. More food, because, you know, I’m so hungry. Haven’t been eating well. Hard to afford groceries when your asshole boss is leaning on every network and paper in town keeping me from getting another job. I’m actually kinda far from my apartment right now, gonna take me a while to get back there on foot, how ‘bout you meet me there at…six?”_

Treece nodded to Drake. Drake nodded to her.

“Yeah,” she said, unable to tear her eyes away from his, like a mouse being stared down by a snake. “Your apartment at six. I’ll see you then.”

Drake reached out and hung up the call.

“I’m disappointed,” he said mildly. “You and me, I thought we were in this together. For the future of humanity. For the children. Walk with me.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, and Dora hurried after him as he left her office.

“Why’d you do it?” Drake asked as he led the way.

She swallowed. “I was…troubled…by…what we’ve been…doing,” she answered gingerly.

“I get it,” he soothed. “I get it. We’ve all been troubled. It’s…the nature of what we do. But I need to know that you’re with me on this, Dr. Skirth. No one understands these beautiful creatures better than you.”

He opened a door and gestured her in, following once she was inside. In the corner, A02 seethed at her from inside its containment module.

“Four days in the host,” Drake said crisply, “and the host dies. Why?”

“Because it wasn’t a proper bond,” she sighed.

“That’s not possible. The host was _fine_ for _four days_.”

Drake was getting annoyed, but so was she.

“No,” she snapped. “The symbiote was _patient_ for four days, but you’re _starving_ it! They’re not dumb animals, Carlton! They’re aware, they know you’re keeping them prisoner, and you gave them a choice between starving themselves or dying to our atmosphere!”

He rocked back in affront. “I don’t think I like your attitude, Dr. Skirth,” he chided.

At the other end of the room, A02 roiled.

Dora swallowed. “I don’t think they like yours,” she said in a voice that only trembled a little.

Drake’s expression hardened, and he leaned in like he was going to entrust her with a great secret. “Well then,” he said quietly, “you better hope it likes _you_.” Abruptly, he strode for the door. “Open it,” he commanded as he left the room.

A02 surged out as the lab tech opened the containment module, but then hurried after Drake. Dora waited, one eye on the symbiote and the other on the retreating form of her boss. The instant he was out of sight, she pulled out the sound bomb she’d rigged and set it off. A02, mere centimeters from her skin, recoiled and tried to flee. Dora chased it around the room, away from its canister, until it shivered and convulsed into a half-melted mess of stiff spikes and went still.

The door opened at her security code, and she ran for the garage. Whether A01 could be reasoned with or not, whether they’d bonded or he was just food, Eddie Brock was walking into a trap.

 

** Venom **

“Dr. Skirth!”

Anne kept eating, but behind her eyes, Venom was paying attention.

 _Who’s Dr. Skirth?_ she asked silently.

**Shh. I need to listen.**

Eddie was assuring Drake’s lieutenant that he was fine. Then he covered the phone and turned back to the table, where the three humans were eating noodles and vegetables. “The lady who let me into the lab wants to run some tests,” he said in a near-whisper.

Venom nudged Anne aside. “ **Skirth. Yes, I would like to speak with her.** ”

“Okay, uh, V-”

“ **She does not know my name.** ”

“-the s-”

“ **I have a designation.** ”

“…what was that?” Eddie asked. “Can you write it-”

“ **No.** ”

“-okay, never mind. Um. Yeah. You can come over, sure, I’ll meet you at my apartment.”

He gave them a thumbs-up. Dan returned the gesture. Then Eddie froze. “No, I’m…out. Getting food. _More_ food, because, you know, I’m so hungry. Haven’t been eating well. Hard to afford groceries when your asshole boss is leaning on every network and paper in town keeping me from getting another job. I’m actually kinda far from my apartment right now, gonna take me a while to get back there on foot, how ‘bout you meet me there at…six?”

Now Anne was paying attention, and when Eddie took the phone away from his ear, Venom passed her control.

“I know that look,” she said. “You smell a trap.”

Eddie picked up his fork and poked at his noodles. “Yeah. She was on speakerphone. Whoever was listening in – and it was probably Drake – thinks I’m the host. They’re gonna be at my apartment with guns, and they’re probably not gonna be happy when they find out I’m by myself.”

If Anne had been scared before, she was nearly mindless now. The thought of Eddie coming to harm, _for her_ , brought her to a state of hysterical panic – but what was interesting was that he hadn’t hesitated before offering himself up as bait, and he showed no signs of intending to back out.

“ **You will not be alone,** ” Venom growled. “ **I will come with you.** ”

He looked up in shock. “But-”

“ **I owe you my freedom.** ” Inside, Anne’s panic was turning to relief. “ **You saved me from Drake. Allow me to return the favor.** ”

Eddie looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but Venom was listening to Anne’s incoherent thanks.

 

“So this is…new,” Eddie muttered as he walked down the street, hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

**What is?**

“You…being in my head but not being all…large and in charge.”

Although communication was not yet perfect – and Venom made another note to remove xirself from Eddie’s body before it reached that point – xie knew that he meant both the morning’s escape and the brief time in the hospital.

 **I apologize for using your body without permission,** Venom said slowly. **There was no time for pleasantries when I escaped Drake’s facility, nor when Dan used the ‘ultrasound’.**

Eddie shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. It’s been a weird day, that’s all.”

**Why are you doing this?**

“What, leading Drake’s creeps away from Annie?” A glance up the street, then down it, and Eddie jogged across to the other side. “I should think that’s obvious. Doesn’t matter what happens to me, as long as Annie’s safe. You must feel the same way, or you wouldn’t be walking into this trap with me.”

**You are afraid they will kill you.**

“Yep. I can’t run, I can’t hide, and I’m probably gonna die, but hey – Annie will be fine and that’s all that matters.”

**She will _not_ be ‘fine’.**

Eddie stumbled in alarm. “What?”

**She will not be ‘fine’ if you die. She will be devastated by your death. Therefore, you are not allowed to die.**

“Thanks,” he muttered, “but I don’t see where I’ve got much of a choice there.”

Guilt and disbelief churned through his mind.

 **I will keep you safe,** Venom promised.

The terror came back, but Eddie did not give any outward sign of it. “I’m not convinced we’re not _still_ gonna die,” he puffed as he reached the door to his apartment building, “but thanks.”

**Just do not fight me when I take control of your body, and you will be fine.**

That made him pause. “Uh…if you say so.”

 **I have done this before. It will be…** Xie paused as anticipation shivered delightfully through xir. **…fun.**

“I get the feeling your type of fun and mine are two different things,” Eddie muttered as he climbed the stairs. “We’ve got…twenty minutes before our guests arrive. You wanna…talk or something?”

**What do you want to know?**

Eddie flopped down on his couch. “I guess…why Annie? You already had me running you around, why didn’t you just stick with me?”

Venom swirled restlessly. **I had been the death of your friend Maria. I used you to gain my freedom. I did not think you would want to be stuck with me after that. I saw a compatible host and I went to her; I did not know you two were…acquainted.**

“Yeah, we’re more than just _acquainted,_ ” he muttered, the guilt surfacing. “We used to be together. Engaged. Then I fucked up and she ditched me so I didn’t drag her down, too, and I don’t blame her.”

That was something xie was going to have to get Anne’s side of, once their little appointment had been completed.

**She worries for you.**

“She doesn’t need me. She has Dan.”

 **She _cares_ for you! Even if I did not owe you my freedom,** Venom snarled silently, **I would have come to protect you _because_ she cares for you.**

“What do _you_ care?” Eddie spat. “She’s just a body for you to use. Why do you care if she’s happy or not?”

**Because believe it or not, I do not enjoy making my hosts suffer. When I bond with a compatible host, our minds merge as well. I feel with your skin, taste with your tongue, see with your eyes and hear with your ears. Right now, if you were to suffer, I would suffer with you. Why would I want to endure your misery as if it were my own?**

That distracted Eddie. “So wait – if I punched myself in the nuts, you’d be in pain just like if you had nuts and I punched you in them?”

**Yes.**

“And if I ate something I really hated, you would be forced to feel my disgust?”

**Yes.**

He thought about that for a minute before asking, “Does that mean you feel my emotions, too? You…you’d be willing to die for Annie because I am? You…love her?”

**I am here, with you, because she could not stand the thought of you being hurt and not being able to help. But unlike her, I _can_ help; I can keep you safe. Therefore, I chose to go with you and ensure you do not die. **

“She really does have feelings for me still,” Eddie whispered, the words tight as he blinked moisture away from his eyes. His thoughts went to the ride to the hospital, and Anne’s mouth moving against his.

 **What was that?** Venom asked curiously. **That memory. Was she attempting to eat your face?**

“Huh? Oh, the kiss. Nah, that’s a display of affection.”

**Your people pretend to eat faces as a courtship gesture? I _like_ your species.**

 

** Dr. Skirth **

It took Dora far longer than she liked to get off the Life Foundation grounds, stash her car out of sight in a parking garage, and get herself into a public area where there were enough people around to make it too messy to retrieve her.

Tracking Eddie Brock down hadn’t been _difficult_ , but along the way, she’d learned that he’d been engaged to one of the lawyers working the wrongful death suit against the Life Foundation for the pancreatic cancer trials. She’d had Ms. Weying’s number in her phone because it’s never good to _not_ answer when a lawyer is calling, but now she was actually the one initiating the call. Eddie would never trust that she wasn’t being used by Drake, but she _had_ to warn him somehow.

Maybe he’d listen to his ex.

_“Anne Weying.”_

“Hi, this is Dora Skirth, from the Life Foundation…”

There was a strained pause. _“Dr. Skirth, how would you describe symbiote A-zero-one?”_

Dora blinked. “Uh. Goopy, black, exhibits considerable self-control and either compassion or self-serving altruism?” Realization sank in, and she gasped. “Oh my god, you’ve been in contact with Eddie. Please, you have to warn him – he’s heading into a trap!”

On the other end, Anne laughed _. “Oh, he knows. I’d say whoever Drake’s sending after him are the ones walking into a trap.”_

“Good.” Dora was surprised how bitter that word was. “They _deserve_ to be eaten.”

There was muffled conversation on Anne’s side, and then she asked, _“Dora, are you safe?”_

“Probably not,” she answered, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “Drake tried to feed me to the other symbiote, but I killed it. I don’t _think_ he knows yet that I’m not dead, but…”

_“Okay. Where are you now?”_

Dora turned to look at the buildings around her and read out an address.

_“Good. There’s a pizza place on the corner, do you see it?”_

“I do.”

_“Go there, place an order for Weying. Carry-out. Two large, one pepperoni and one whatever you want. Wait there. I’ll come in and pick it up, and you’ll leave with me.”_

“I’ll do that,” she promised. Then she looked at the time. “It’s after six. When you get here, we _need_ to find Eddie.”

_“Agreed,” Anne said emphatically. “Hang tight, I’ll be there in twenty.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out to the props team here: it's just past 7:30 on his watch when Eddie chugs a glass of tap water and about 11:40 on his phone when he gets Anne's location from her office. Also, his fridge is absolutely the fridge of a man who's been a wreck for six months. He has take-out leftovers, eggs that are probably bad, booze, and everything else in his fridge is condiments. His freezer has a box of Eggos, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, and tater-tots.


	4. SWAT team not invited

** Venom **

**They are at the door.**

Eddie stood up and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “I guess I better let them in, then.”

**I will let you do the talking.**

“Probably a good idea,” he muttered.

Just then, there was an aggressive knock at the door. When Eddie peered through the peephole, however, the hallway was empty. He opened the door, and immediately three armed toughs in nondescript black clothes muscled their way in, followed by someone Venom recognized.

 **That is Drake’s chief thug,** xie informed Eddie as said thug strolled in and closed the door behind him.

“Hey, Eddie,” the chief thug said casually. “I’m gonna need Mr. Drake’s property back.”

A bubble of wild laughter rose in Eddie’s chest. Maybe it was bleeding over from Venom’s growing excitement; maybe it was the purest form of fatalistic humor in the face of almost-certain death, or perhaps just an ironic warning.

Either way, what came out of his mouth was, “Over my dead body.”

Two of the subordinate thugs immediately drew their firearms and took aim on Eddie’s torso, and he had his hands in the air a heartbeat later.

 **What are you doing?** Venom asked, xir mental voice holding a distinctly disbelieving tone.

“I’m putting my hands up,” Eddie answered nervously.

**Why would you do that?**

“Because it is a very sensible thing to do,” came the whimpered reply, soaked in the understanding that hands in the air meant ‘don’t shoot’ and Eddie was very, _very_ afraid that they would shoot.

The chief thug was giving them a strange look, somewhere between tolerantly amused and warily skeptical. “Eddie?”

Venom formed a very toothy mental grin. **I will take care of this.**

“Eddie,” repeated the chief thug in a firmer voice, “where’s the bug?”

Just as he gave the order to ‘take him down’, Venom lashed out with a tendril that was an extension of Eddie’s arm, tossing one goon out the window. The other wrapped around the second goon and flung him into the ceiling, only to whip him to the floor hard enough that something cracked wetly. Before the last two men could react, xie reached out and grabbed both of them with tendrils. The chief thug got slammed into his subordinate and released, but the third goon…

The tendrils reached through his eye sockets, and Venom hissed in delight as xie sucked the delicious filling out of his crunchy, crunchy head.

The chief thug rushed Eddie, but Venom caught him by the throat.

“I’m so sorry about your friends,” Eddie said in a voice that couldn’t decide if it was terrified or giddy.

Then Venom hurled him into a wall.

For a moment, it looked like they were victorious, but in the next breath two more goons burst in and Venom had to act fast to keep xir host from being perforated by bullets. The table was sacrificed as a disarming distraction, and Venom gleefully formed an oversized fist to crush the throat of one before tossing the other onto the stirring body of his superior.

 **Outstanding,** xie purred as xie relinquished control, mentally salivating at the thought of the feast xie would have. **Now, let’s bite all their heads off and pile them up in the corner.**

Eddie whimpered again. “Why would we do that?”

What kind of silly question was that? **Pile of bodies, pile of heads.** Really, wasn’t it obvious? What else did you _do_ with the bodies of your defeated foes?

Thudding footsteps suggested xie would not have time to feast, however, and Eddie was growing nervous about the physical safety of his belongings. While the symbiote slammed the first of the reinforcements against the door across the hall, Eddie dashed for the stairs-

**Not that way.**

-only to skid on the floor and dash _away_ from the armed thugs on the stairs. As he helplessly repeated the word ‘no’ in frantic protest, Venom threw his body through the window at the end of the hall and lashed out to catch the balcony of a neighboring building, swinging xir panicking host to safety. Then they were dashing through that building, knowing they were being followed but hoping they were at least confusing their trail.

When they burst out of an exit opening onto an alley, Eddie’s heart leaped. His motorcycle, his beloved motorcycle, was waiting for him and the goons were not. Venom sat back as xir host mounted the bike in a fluid, confident motion and peeled out into the darkened streets. He may not be good at running and dodging and fighting, he thought, but this – riding his motorcycle as though he and the speeding machine were one – this, he _was_ good at, and it made his heart sing, the terror spinning itself into more familiar excitement.

It wasn’t long before they were being followed – no, _chased_ – by a black SUV.

 **You drive,** Venom commanded, turning xir attention to xir own senses and not the human’s. **I will keep us safe.**

“I sure hope you’re right,” Eddie whimpered, achingly aware that he wasn’t wearing his helmet and if they crashed, his brains would wind up painted all over the road.

Faster now, they zipped through traffic, weaving between slower-moving vehicles as small, flying machines chased them. Venom lashed some out of the air and others slammed into obstacles. Xie wasn’t sure what they were for, but Eddie seemed to think they were monitoring devices so xie kept knocking them off-course when they got close enough. Eddie was doing a remarkable job keeping them moving at exhilarating speeds, weaving gracefully in and out of lanes, and finally they’d destroyed the last of the little flying machines. The SUV had long since lost their trail.

Then another two screamed around a corner, just as they passed into an emptier section of the city.

“Oh, yeah!” shouted Eddie. “We got _more_ friends! Awesome!”

It was _not_ awesome, his mind was shrieking. He was, in fact, _terrified_. But he was conveniently bleeding a map of the city streets for Venom to peruse, and the symbiote coated his hands to partially control their direction. One sharp left later, they were speeding up a steep hill and Eddie was screaming because they were going much faster than was wise, with the way the hill was at the top-

The bike left the road. They left the bike. Venom reached out with more tendrils to pull them back together and steady them as they landed again.

**Sorry.**

Eddie just whimpered.

Then they were racing for their goal: a dead end with a railing and another street beneath it.

“That is a dead end!” Eddie shouted, just to make sure his passenger had gotten the point.

Venom purred. **Not for us.**

Tendrils launched the bike over the railing; the SUVs chasing them crashed through it. Venom’s excitement infected Eddie for a second time, making him grin as they once again sped through traffic with only one of the vehicles following them. Then they were rushing toward a line of cars rudely blocking the intersection, but Venom ensured that they squeezed through a gap.

The SUV didn’t even slow down, and Eddie didn’t turn to see what was happening as metal screeched and glass shattered behind him.

The two SUVs they’d thought they’d lost converged on the bike, and Venom was hard-pressed to keep xir squishy host from _getting_ pressed as they got too close.

“I am going to die!”

**You are not going to die!**

The human wanted to believe that, he really did. Exerting xirself greatly, Venom broke the windows of the SUVs and forced them to drive off at opposing angles, crashing into cars parked on either side of the street. They were free-

Another black SUV lunged out of a side-street and the motorcycle crashed into it, hurling Eddie into the air with visions of his brains splattered all over the street. Venom curled around xir host desperately, absorbing most of the brutal impact as they hit and bounced and rolled, but there was still some structural damage.

While Eddie lay on the road groaning and Venom tried to mend what had been broken, the chief thug stepped out of the SUV. “I got him,” he announced into a hand-held device.

 _“Bring him home,”_ said a voice from inside the device.

Drake.

The thug knelt down. “You have been a serious pain in the ass for me, Eddie,” he hissed.

“Don’t look at me,” Eddie panted. “It was all _him_. I’m just along for the ride.”

Venom wrapped a tendril around the thug’s neck again, but this time, xie went deeper and sucked some of the sweetness out of a couple internal organs as xie put xir host’s legs back together. Then xie enveloped xir host completely, something that warned xir they needed to end this _very_ quickly and separate before they wound up completely bonded.

The thug was struggling.

“ **Eyes, lungs, pancreas,** ” Venom growled, pulling words for organs out of the memories of Skirth talking about xir dying hosts. “ **So many snacks, so little time.** ”

But before xie could begin to feast, there was a detonation from behind xir and something slammed into xir back. One of the subordinate thugs had actually fired on xir and xir precious, fragile host! Venom tossed the chief thug aside and lunged, biting the goon’s crunchy, delicious head off and devouring it.

A shout of “S-F-P-D, don’t move!” was, according to Eddie, a peacekeeper and an innocent. Not food, especially not with how revolted the human was at feeling Venom eat xir crunchy treat.

Xie ran.

They were close to a bridge; Venom made straight for it and leaped into the dark water – only to lash out with tendrils and quickly pull xirself and xir shivering host up into the dark under-structure of the bridge.

The ‘police’ had the entire area surrounded quickly, with lights and sirens and a great deal of chatter as bystanders gathered and traffic snarled.

 _Now what?_ Eddie asked silently.

Venom huffed. **I was hoping _you_ would have an idea.**

 

** Anne **

_I won’t be any help to you,_ Dan had insisted while she was on the phone with Dr. Skirth. So she’d dropped him off at the hospital for his shift and immediately turned around to pick up her pizzas…and her new _friend_.

Having Venom recognize Skirth by name was…interesting…but this whole day had been weird and Anne suspected that she was as calm about it as she was mostly because Venom saw the whole symbiote/host thing as completely normal. And actually, having memories left in her head was turning out to be useful. On her own, she wouldn’t trust Skirth – not after Drake used her like that – but Venom…Venom _did_ , or at least, he trusted Skirth to be on _his_ side rather than Drake’s, and _that_ was a fascinating thing to learn.

She wondered how Skirth would react to hearing about everything that had happened that day.

There was a parking space free in front of the pizza place, which was a blessing. Anne snatched it up and jumped out, the bell above the door ringing as she walked inside. “Pickup for Weying,” she announced as an employee hurried to the cash register, and a nervous-looking woman with dark hair fell in beside her. Anne paid, the man handed over two pizzas, and the woman she assumed was Dr. Skirth accepted them. They walked out to the car in silence, Anne opening the passenger door for her guest before climbing back into the driver’s seat, and _then_ she spoke.

“Dr. Skirth, I presume?” she asked as she pulled back out into traffic.

“Call me Dora, please,” the other woman answered.

Anne nodded. “Alright, and call me Anne. If you’re hungry, help yourself to whatever the second pizza is. I’m heading to Eddie’s apartment now,” she said as the other woman immediately dug into the top pizza box. “Venom _said_ he’d keep Eddie safe, but…”

Dora swallowed her bite of supreme pizza. “Venom?”

“A-zero-one. The black symbiote, the one that escaped.”

“It has a _name?_ ”

“And a preference for male pronouns,” Anne clarified. “We…sort of already had that discussion.”

“It-” Dora shook her head. “ _He_ can talk? Was it through a host body?”

The memory of that rumbling, growling voice distracted her for a moment, and she almost missed her turn. “He _did_ speak through my body, and Eddie’s, but he can also communicate directly with his host.”

Hurriedly, her passenger swallowed another bite of pizza. “ _Your_ body? You were a host?”

“It’s been a weird day,” Anne answered dryly. “Let’s find Eddie and then we can all catch up.”

Dora shook her head. “Yes, of course. If the sy- if _Venom_ is using him as a host, he’s in great danger.”

“Because Drake-”

“Because the symbiotes eat living tissue,” the scientist corrected firmly as they stopped at a red light. “They need to ingest mitochondria to survive. And if they can’t get that from the host’s diet…” She turned to give Anne a solemn look. “…then they get it from the host.”

The light turned green. As Anne accelerated, she thought, _Well, that explains the sushi._

“So what are you saying? Venom’s eating Eddie from the inside out?”

“Carlton Drake ordered human trials. In every case, the host’s organs deteriorated as the symbiote ate them to survive. Venom was the most kind about it, delaying death rather than killing his hosts immediately like the other two did, and withdrawing before the host died. Not that it mattered,” she added bitterly. “Drake had the rejected subjects killed to autopsy them for why they had _been_ rejected. Maybe it’s foolish of me to apply human motivations to the actions of a literally alien being, but I _want_ to believe that Venom was showing mercy.”

Anne took a deep breath and signaled for the next turn. “Well, he chose to go with Eddie to his apartment because Eddie saved his life getting him away from Drake, and he said he wanted to return the favor.”

Dora was staring. “That’s…that’s morality. Honor, debt-exchange, gratitude – this is _amazing_. But still, if Eddie’s been his host this long…”

“He hasn’t,” Anne said sharply, unsure if she was defending Venom or warding off the possibility that he might have hurt Eddie. “I have, since about seven-thirty this morning when I got a craving for sushi. Quarter of noon, I had half a dozen raw oysters. And then,” she added with a note of repressed hysteria and disbelief, “I ate a live lobster.”

Again, Dora was staring, and she shook her head. “You’re right. It _has_ been a weird day.”

 

There were police keeping everyone away from Eddie’s apartment. Shots had been fired, lots of shots, and there were at least three corpses – but none of them were Eddie. One of the officers told Anne that they couldn’t tell her more; there was a high-speed chase going on elsewhere, and several accidents as a result.

Then a new report came in, a slightly-hysterical officer insisting that a giant black monster had bit someone’s head off and then fled the scene to dive into the bay. Helpfully, he announced the location where this had happened.

Anne and Dora retreated to the car and drove off.

By the time they got to the bridge, of course, the place was a crime scene swarming with police and POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS tape setting up a perimeter. Dora stayed in the car, partially to guard it and partially because she was still eating, while Anne went to see what information she could get.

Nothing, it turned out, because the crowd was too thick for her to even get through. She stood at the edge, feeling tears prick at her eyes and hating it, hating _this_ , because here she was, trying desperately to find her estranged ex-fiancé and the alien symbiote who had promised to protect him but who _might actually be eating his organs_ and she had _zero_ proof that either of them were actually here, this was just the last place they’d been sighted. And what if Venom hadn’t been able to protect Eddie? What if he was laying in a ditch somewhere, bleeding to death, and Venom had run off with someone _else?_ What if she never saw Eddie again, what if-

“Annie?”

The sound of her name in Eddie’s voice, Eddie’s _I know I fucked up but please don’t be angry_ voice, broke into the spiral of her terrified thoughts and she whirled, arms wrapped crushingly tight around him before his appearance even registered. She wanted to greet him, to express relief that he wasn’t dead, but she was crying into his…dripping wet hoodie…and she didn’t care, she honestly didn’t give a single fuck about what she might be doing to her clothes. Eddie was alive, he was okay, he was hugging her desperately back and Venom had made good on his promise to protect him.

“We have to get you out of those wet clothes,” she said unsteadily as Venom shifted under her skin and the sobbing eased. “I have an emergency blanket in the back, and we brought pizza.”

**We? You do not mean Dan.**

“Wait a second. I thought Dan had to work,” Eddie was saying, making no move to let go of her until she let go of him first. “Who texted me back?”

Reluctantly, Anne unwrapped her arms from around Eddie’s chest and swiped at her eyes, resolving to leaving a glowing review for the case that had protected Eddie’s phone after a dip in the bay. “Who did you text?”

“You, to let you know we were under the bridge and didn’t know how to get back because of all the cops…but someone texted me back saying you were already here on the edge of the crowd and…hey, did I hear you say pizza? Because I am _starved_.”

Shakily, Anne laughed. “Get in the car and tell Dora to give you the other pizza. I’ll get the blanket.”

**Dora? Who is- ahhh, Skirth. Yes, good, I am looking forward to speaking with her.**

_Yeah, well, she’s pretty focused on the idea that you were snacking on Eddie’s organs,_ Anne replied as she led Eddie to the car and wrapped him up in the wool blanket she kept for emergencies. _And if you have…_ She let the sentence trail off silently, trusting that the symbiote would feel the depths of her emotions.

 **I did snack on organs during our adventure,** Venom replied, **but they were not his.**

_Okay then._

One last adjustment to make sure Eddie was swaddled and buckled in and able to stuff pizza into his mouth without help, and Anne gave in to the temptation to take his face in her hands and kiss his forehead before forcing herself to let go and climb back into the driver’s seat.

“To the hospital?” Dora asked pointedly, and Anne didn’t care enough to argue.

“Sure,” she sighed, all her worry draining away now that Eddie was safe in the back seat. “To the hospital.”

 

**Eddie’s motorcycle was more fun.**

Anne rolled her eyes, “Eddie’s motorcycle wouldn’t carry us all.”

Dora looked over at her. “Is…he…?”

“Talking to me? Yeah.” She looked in the rear-view mirror. “Eddie? You okay back there?”

He gave her a stricken look. “Shit, my bike. We left it – the police are gonna trace it back to me.”

“The police are going to report it stolen and you’re going to file an insurance claim,” Anne told him firmly. “You were with us all night. Someone shot up your apartment. And you left your helmet; the bike was clearly stolen and the thief crashed it, but _you_ had nothing to do with any of that.”

**That is not what happened.**

“Sometimes it’s _not_ what happened,” she retorted. “It’s what you can prove.”

From the back seat, Eddie muttered, “You’re scary, Annie. That’s hot.”

**Your pulse quickened. You enjoy his attentions. Why are you with Dan and not him?**

Anne’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m not discussing that right now. Go digging through my memories and we’ll talk about it later.”

**Deal.**

“You’re being remarkably calm about this,” Dora said curiously. “I mean – you’re hosting an actual, real-live alien and you’re experiencing symbiosis! Aren’t you even a _little_ excited?”

“I had eight trays of supermarket deli sushi for breakfast and ate a live lobster,” she retorted dryly. “I think I skipped straight from confusion to acceptance.”

 **That is a side effect of the bonding process.** Venom sounded…slightly guilty? **Once the process is complete, you will feel mild withdrawal symptoms if I am not inside you.**

“Apparently that’s part of the process,” she told Dora. “A side effect of the bond. And here I thought it was a side effect of dating Eddie,” she added with a smile for the rear-view mirror.

Eddie wasn’t looking at her.

Maybe it was just the long day he’d had, the fact that he’d been chased down and probably nearly died multiple times, the dunk in the bay, or food coma from having stuffed half a pizza into his belly, but justified distraction or not, the fact that he wasn’t looking at her sent her adrenaline spiking because she knew _,_ she just _knew_ , something was wrong.

**He was prepared to die for you, although he was terrified of the possibility. I told him that you would be crushed by his death.**

Venom was right, but that brought up the whole tangle that was her relationship with Eddie. _Why are you trying so hard to fix us up?_ Anne thought furiously.

**It is as I told him: bonding with a compatible host means I live vicariously through you. I will taste with your mouth, feel with your skin, and share your emotions. If you are unhappy, then so am I.**

Suddenly, she realized that life for a symbiote was depressingly empty without a host. There was nothing in Venom’s body that would produce physical sensations outside of pain, and his sensory perceptions were devoid of color. He was like the ghost of a baby who’d died before it could really live, doomed to an eternity of sharing other people’s lives, and he was already emotionally invested in her…

…and Eddie.

_Is that because I love him?_

Venom squirmed guiltily before he responded. **Not entirely. He came to Drake’s facility seeking a vanished friend, only to witness her death as I transferred from her to him. That was the first act of compassion I had witnessed from your species. I sought out another compatible host so that I would not burden him with a lifetime of being bonded to his friend’s killer. He has…a great capacity for selflessness.**  The symbiote seemed humbled by that.

Anne found herself smiling fondly, an expression she hadn’t worn for six months. _Yeah, he’ll give someone his last twenty and realize after the fact that he needed the money for himself. Drives me crazy trying to get him to take care of himself, but yeah – he has a big heart and I wouldn’t change that about him for anything._

In silence, they drove the rest of the way to the hospital.

 

There was no way for them to sneak Eddie into the hospital, not and be able to run him through the tests Dora wanted, so they went with brazen audacity and said that he’d been at the Life Foundation when _an incident_ occurred and Dr. Skirth needed to use the hospital’s equipment to check him out because theirs had been…damaged…in the incident. Anne invoked Dan’s authority to run the tests, and the girl behind the check-in counter decided she wasn’t being paid enough to keep them out.

“Alright,” she said as she typed into her computer. “I’ll just need Mr. Brock’s insurance card.”

Eddie, still wrapped in the blanket and looking miserable, started to stammer out that he didn’t have it, but Anne held up one hand and he went silent.

“Right here,” she told the girl, fishing the appropriate card out of her wallet and handing it over.

“You…” Eddie didn’t finish the question, but the look he gave her was someone without hope begging for an explanation, and it made her heart ache.

“I always keep a copy of your insurance card on me,” she answered quietly, unable to meet his eyes. “Just in case. Especially after the time that hobo stabbed you and stole your wallet.”

“You kept me on your insurance?” he asked in a rusty voice.

The words were like a dagger to the chest. Did he really think…? Well, she hadn’t ever actually explained, had she? Guilt kept her eyes down as she nodded because this was on her, this was _her_ fault, _she’d_ done this to him by just _assuming_ he knew what she was thinking.

“Why?” It was barely a whisper.

All the things she couldn’t say swarmed up. She swallowed them back down and forced herself to look at him, the man she’d hurt so badly that he had to _ask_ why she’d kept him on her insurance.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she countered quietly.

Eddie looked away.

They were taken in rather quickly, Eddie ushered away to change into a hospital gown while Anne left Dora to conduct the tests and ran his clothes under the hand dryer in the bathroom until they were dry. He was transferred to a private room to wait for the results, and seeing him in the hospital bed really drove home how thin and tired and just _exhausted_ he looked. Venom echoed her concern silently, but she couldn’t tell whose guilt she was feeling. She sat beside the bed and took his hand, rubbing her thumb over the backs of his fingers, and he gave her a wan little smile as he squeezed her hand. It was the sort of smile she expected to see in a movie, when the love interest or important family member is dying and trying to convince the protagonist to go on without them, and she absolutely did _not_ like seeing it on Eddie’s scruffy, too-thin face.

While Dora got absorbed by whatever she was checking on her phone, Eddie dozed off and left Anne alone with her guilt…and her passenger.

 **I have looked through your memories,** he said in as subdued a rumble as she’d heard from him yet. **Drake threatened you, and to save yourself, you separated yourself from him.**

 _If you’re going to chew me out for doing it, you’re too late,_ she snapped back.

**No. I can see that this decision hurt you almost as much as it hurt him. But surely, when we kill Drake, his threat will be lifted and you can-**

_Can what, get back together?_ she thought bitterly. _I’m in a relationship with Dan. I can’t just toss him to the side, and I don’t **want** to. I **like** living with him, I like the relationship we’ve built._

**But it does not make you happy.**

_It makes me…content._

**But not happy. _Eddie_ makes you happy.**

_I can’t live with him again,_ she thought with a mental shudder, hurling months and years of domestic frustration at the symbiote: Eddie insisting on doing his share of chores but never doing them, Anne nagging him repeatedly before just doing them herself. It would have been less stressful for her to just do them in the first place, but he _insisted_ and she _let him_ and it was just a whole spiral of stress in their relationship.

Venom went silent, gnawing at the paradox of wanting desperately to be with the man who drove her crazy but made her happy and, at the same time, not wanting to give up the clean, organized relationship with the man who was so understanding and supportive. They functioned like two halves of a well-oiled machine, her and Dan, and after the frustration trying and failing to get into sync with Eddie, it was grounding and refreshing. But at the same time, she missed the warm chaos, the dizzy affection, the very _liveliness_ that was having Eddie Brock in her life.

How could she choose between them? How could she look at either of them and turn away?

 **Take them both,** Venom suggested.

 _Humans don’t do that,_ she snapped. _We’re a monogamous species._

**But you have been with two mates.**

_Not at the same time!_

**You care for both of them. It is a _cultural_ taboo to not take two mates at once, not a biological one.**

_Even if I could change the culture to allow me to have both of them, I don’t know if Eddie even wants me back, much less if it means sharing me._

A nurse poked her head in to announce that Dr. Lewis would be in momentarily with Mr. Brock’s test results.

“Do you think I could…get my clothes back?” Eddie asked tiredly when the nurse vanished again.

Guiltily, Anne dropped his hand and fumbled for them. “Of course. Here – there’s a bathroom, you can change- do you need help getting there?”

Studiously not looking at her, he took the clothes and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “No…no. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

In silent anguish, she watched him shuffle into the bathroom and then stared at the door until it opened again, hastily averting her eyes before they locked with Eddie’s.

“Venom,” Dora asked suddenly, not raising her eyes from her phone, “the yellow symbiote – what happened?”

Venom stirred, and Anne mentally backed away. “ **Phage grew desperate and tried to escape,** ” he said shortly.

“So Phage was the yellow one, and the blue one…?”

“ **Toxin.** ”

Dora looked up and pinned Anne/Venom with a remarkably accusing look. “And who was it that escaped in the crash?”

“What crash?” asked Dan, closing the door behind him.

“ **That was Riot,** ” Venom said slowly. Anne could feel that this was a subject he was uncomfortable with, but not _why_.

Dora nodded. “Riot. I see. And when were you going to mention that your friend was loose on a six-month killing spree in Malaysia?”

“ **Riot is NOT my friend!** ” Anne’s hands were clenched with Venom’s wrath, and she had the distinct impression her face had _changed_ briefly, something Dora’s startled expression confirmed. “ **Riot is a bully who enjoys hurting others.** ”

Eddie raised one hand tentatively. “Yeah, uh. About that – you seemed to be enjoying yourself fighting off Drake’s goons, so…you wanna clarify that position?”

“ **Riot leads a faction who believe that war and destruction is the purpose of our race,** ” growled the symbiote. “ **They see us as being superior, and all other races as no more than food and tools. I am looked down on because I have not forgotten that we are meant to be _partners_ with our hosts, not masters who have enslaved them. Riot will no doubt seek us out to see why we have not begun a reign of death and destruction, and berate us for not breaking free of our imprisonment. Yes, I enjoy combat. Were I of Riot’s ilk,**” he added pointedly, “ **I would have devoured Eddie and left his corpse behind while I transferred to the next human I saw. Instead, I sought a compatible host because I intend to _live_ here instead of just laying waste to everything around me!**”

And yet, Anne thought, there was a thread of guilt behind Venom’s words. Guilt and…fear?

Dora was holding her hands up. “Okay, okay. Dr. …Lewis?”

“Dan, please.” He stepped forward to offer her a hand, and they shook.

“Dora Skirth. You have Eddie’s test results?”

“Yes,” Dan said, all business except for the little frown line between his eyebrows that showed Anne he was worried. _Very_ worried. “I don’t know what happened to Eddie at the Life Foundation, but you were right to bring him in. Every test we ran, every major organ and muscle group except the brain, shows signs of widespread cellular damage and a mitochondrial decrease of ten to thirty-five percent. I-”

“ **Do not listen to him!** ” Venom blurted, panicking silently behind Anne’s eyes. “ **I can fix it!** ”

“…I’ve never seen anything like it,” Dan finished with a curious but wary look in her direction.

“I have,” Dora said in a hard voice. “In every homeless person Drake shoved at a symbiote, seeking a compatible host. You should test Anne, she-”

“ **I have not harmed her!** ”

“No, but you snacked on me, didn’t you?” Eddie asked.

The look he directed at her – _not_ at her, at _Venom_ – was a mix of resignation and betrayal, and the symbiote quivered with anguished guilt. “ **I was starving. I took only the minimum, and carefully. I had no desire to hurt you-** ”

“But you did it anyway.” The words held an edge of anger, but Anne knew he was hurt, badly hurt, and either he was going to lash out verbally or retreat to work through his emotions alone. “I guess when you promised you’d keep me safe, you meant from everything but you.”

Inside her own head, Anne flinched and Venom cringed. Eddie was brushing past Dan, reaching for the door, and Venom-

“No!” she shouted, wresting control back and using her own anger to ward off the symbiote’s impulse to reach out with a tendril and hold the door shut. “Let him go! Let Eddie leave,” she repeated, fists clenched and chest heaving with the internal struggle. “He needs space to think. You’ll only make it worse if you stop him.”

It had been one of their first fights as a couple – Anne had thought he was storming away, throwing a fit like a child, but he just needed to sort out how he felt and he’d come back when he was ready to talk. Venom retreated, chastised that his host had reacted so strongly, and she focused on the world outside of her head in time to see Eddie meet her eyes and nod slightly.

“Thanks, Annie,” he said softly, and then the door was swinging shut behind him.

Dora was looking at her in awe. “Did you just…yell him down?”

“It’s a lot more effective from the inside,” she said, sitting back down and massaging her temples.

Dan laid Eddie’s folder on the bed and sat on one corner. “I feel like I’m missing a part of the story.”

Anne made a you-go-first gesture at Dora.

“I snuck Eddie into the lab early this morning,” she started primly. “Turned off the security system so he could take pictures without getting caught. I can only assume he tried to break his friend Maria out, but she’d been Venom’s host for a week and he was…maybe not _starving_ but very, very hungry. They don’t starve the way we do. Their mass decreases, and I assume at some point they lose higher thought processes if it decreases too much. We discovered Maria’s corpse outside her observation chamber. Eddie was nowhere to be found, thankfully, and there had been so much widespread destruction that it looked like Venom had broken himself out.”

“You’re right on both counts,” Anne told her. “Venom was extremely hungry and if his mass drops too much, he’ll revert to a feral state. Eddie said he woke up on the fire escape of the courthouse. I was there early dropping some papers off, and I assume-”

**You are correct.**

“-okay, Venom confirmed that’s when he left Eddie and went into me instead. Eddie woke up feeling horrible and when he read Dora’s texts, assumed the escaped symbiote was in him because he was missing time and hurt all over and had weird food cravings.” She prodded him, but he refused to speak for himself and she sighed. “Venom took control of Eddie’s body and…snacked…on him before using him to escape. But he was telling the truth, he did take only the bare minimum and he did his best to not damage Eddie’s body because he wanted Eddie to survive the experience, and he feels pretty terrible about having used Eddie like that.”

“So it _was_ mercy,” murmured Dora.

Dan raised his hand. “I just have one question. Venom?”

The symbiote squirmed, and Anne sighed again. “He’s listening.”

“You said you could fix it. Were you telling the truth?”

At Anne’s prodding, Venom reluctantly took control. “ **I can fix it. It will require heavy feeding beforehand, but I can replace what was taken.** ”

“I want to have him under medical supervision for that,” Dan said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Make sure his cells can withstand being punctured a second time.”

“ **Agreed,** ” Venom said in a subdued growl. “ **I truly do not wish to harm him further.** ”

“Good. Once Eddie cools down…?” Dan raised his eyebrows, silently asking if that’s what would happen, and Anne nodded. “Once Eddie cools down, we can discuss treatment with him.”

Dora cleared her throat. “While we’re waiting…have there been any bodies found in the airport?”

“Now that you mention it, there was one body found in a women’s bathroom…” Dan trailed off. “Oh. Oh, no. You think…”

“ **Riot.** ”

A chill ran down Anne’s spine, and she wasn’t sure if it was hers or Venom’s.

“-check the body for cellular damage,” Dan was saying. “Be back in a few.”

The door closed behind him.

“You killed Toxin,” Anne blurted to Dora. “How did you do it?”

The scientist blinked. “Sound. I salvaged part of the security system after I figured out the alarm siren had killed Phage. Don’t tell me you want to track down and kill Riot.”

“Drake has another rocket, right?. Riot will want to bring back a load of his brutal lackeys.”

“And Drake wants Venom back _very_ badly. He’d welcome another symbiote with open arms.” Her eyes widened. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Give me a second and I’ll find out,” Anne said, reaching for her phone. “Eddie hates hospitals. I wouldn’t put it past him to have left.”

It only took a few seconds for her to get ‘find my iPhone’ up and track Eddie’s. He was…

**That’s bad.**

“What is it?” Dora asked warily.

Anne swallowed a whimper. “He’s moving away from the hospital very quickly, and he’s heading…”

“Oh, no.”

“…towards the Life Foundation.”


	5. Fighting ugly

** Venom **

Venom was not having fun _at all_.

This was supposed to have been a scouting mission: cause havoc and chaos, eat a bunch of heads, pile up a bunch of bodies, find a compatible host and vanish into the landscape to build a nice little herd of natives xie could live vicariously through, and cheerfully pretend Riot didn’t exist for as long as possible. Instead, xie had been imprisoned and starved for six months, tripped over a compatible host while killing his friend, managed to pick _his mate_ as xir new host, and now Riot had chosen _the absolute worst_ time to track them down because the sweet, tender morsel named Eddie Brock had been _kidnapped_ and Venom was going to have to charge in and rescue him _and_ destroy Drake’s rocket so he couldn’t bring back reinforcements _while_ running the very strong risk of crossing paths with Riot.

Who had been feeding unchecked for six months.

It was _not_ ideal, and Venom would have preferred to take Anne and vanish, to hide for as long as they could, but that wasn’t an option. Eddie was in danger, and where he was willing to die to protect Anne, _her_ reaction was more along the lines of ‘kill to get Eddie back or die trying’.

It was a very relatable reaction, actually, and that solidarity was strengthening their bond.

Learning that Skirth had weaponized sound to kill Toxin was startling, but it meant the humans had a weapon to defend themselves with in the event that Riot won and brought back enough symbiotes to be a true threat to the planet. Xie quite agreed with Anne on that subject: xie was the only symbiote on the planet xie trusted to coexist with humanity, so it was up to xir to ensure that xie _was_ the only symbiote on the planet.

Anne and Skirth tried to plot as they drove up to the Life Foundation, but neither of them had a plan of action by the time they reached the security checkpoint. There were simply too many variables.

Once again, the ruse Skirth had used to smuggle Eddie in worked: Anne crouched on the floor in the back, Skirth showed her security badge, and they were inside. But as they drove across the bridge, they ran into a snag.

“Eddie’s not in the building,” Anne panted as she righted herself in the back. “They’re taking him somewhere, probably to kill him – there’s nothing around him but woods.”

“There’s no roads,” Skirth protested in panic. “We’ll never get to him in time.”

 **Jump,** Venom rumbled to xir host. **Together, you and I can reach Eddie.**

“Keep driving,” Anne ordered. “Improvise. I’ll meet you inside if I can. _Stop that rocket._ ”

“What are you-”

Anne opened the car door. _All you,_ she said silently, passing control to Venom.

They jumped, and xie flowed out to coat her body the way xie had done briefly with Eddie, sending a tendril back to close the car’s door. Then they were in the water, swimming, launching themselves up onto the shore to run on all fours, swift as fear and silent as terror, in the direction of the dot that represented Eddie’s phone.

 **I may need to kill Drake’s soldiers,** Venom warned her silently.

 _Kill anyone who laid a hand on him,_ came the snarled response. _Eat their heads. Eat their bodies. Whatever you need to do, I don’t care._

**Eddie found my feeding…distasteful.**

_He wasn’t too fond of me working the Life Foundation case, either. It doesn’t matter, as long as he’s safe. Relationships are about communication and compromise anyway. If I can deal with Eddie letting the dishes pile up until there’s nothing left to eat out of, then I can deal with you eating a couple of heads. Especially if it’s to keep him safe._

Venom hadn’t been expecting such a pragmatic and determined response. **Very well, then I shall feast on Drake’s minions in the defense of our tasty morsel.**

They were catching up; xie could sense xir future snacks in the distance, smell their heat signatures and Eddie’s blood. Anne shrank to a quiet point of crystalline determination, and Venom ran faster.

“…gonna _walk_ me to death?”

The words were faint; Venom could barely hear them.

_That’s Eddie! …he’s hurt, Venom._

**I know. I can smell his blood.**

“Shut up.”

**That is Drake’s chief thug. This time, I am going to eat his head for sure.**

“Not so tough without your friend,” the thug taunted lazily.

The figures moving through the woods stopped, and Venom leaped into a tree behind them.

“Did your mama not love you?” Eddie taunted back, but there was no strength to it.

 _He’s hurt,_ Anne repeated. _Badly. And he’s scared; I can hear that in his voice. He’s terrified and he’s in pain and we have to save him._

 **We will,** Venom promised darkly.

Eddie tried to take the pistol aimed at his head, and only got struck with it and then kicked for his trouble.

“I guess it pays to be a specialist, huh?” he groaned, on his knees, nearly falling over. “You know…it doesn’t matter if you kill me anyway, because there’s something _way_ bigger afoot in this world than you and me.”

Venom could hear the strain in his voice, and it _hurt_ to hear such a precious morsel suffering. Xie leaped to a closer tree and lashed out for one of the goons.

“ _Much_ bigger than me,” Eddie said as the goon was yanked silently out of sight.

Not bothering with subtlety, Venom tore every cell in the goon’s body apart and sucked out all the sweet, juicy nuggets. Anne seemed unfazed by this, thankfully. Then xie leaped tree to tree towards the other goon, registering that Eddie had frozen for a moment.

“Aaand it’s…much, _much_ bigger than you,” Eddie said, his voice still strained but tinted with confused emotions.

Venom grabbed the second goon and ripped him apart, saving some of the blood which had the same flavor as Eddie’s.

The precious squishy chuckled. “Karma’s a bitch,” he said in that scratchy voice, now tight with giddy relief, as Venom leaped down and prowled up behind the chief thug.

“I don’t believe in karma,” the thug declared.

Venom grabbed him by the shoulders, whipped him around so he could get one glimpse of his death, and then xir teeth crunched down on the tasty treat that had been so rudely delayed.

_That’s what you get for hurting Eddie!_

**You are quite bloodthirsty when it comes to the defense of your mate.**

_Well, I-_

**I approve.**

That surprised her. Venom tossed the thug’s body to the side and turned xir attention to Eddie, who was looking at xir with a strange expression.

_Is he…?_

**Is he what?**

Anne didn’t answer, but she was pleased and excited. Then Eddie uttered a growling sound that almost seemed pained, but was eager at the same time, and Anne’s pleasure gained a smug tone.

_He iiiisssssssss._

**He is _what?_**

_Hard. Oh, he’s so hard. Sexually aroused,_ she clarified as she flooded Venom’s mind with memories of fornication.

 **Is that so? In that case…** Perhaps xie hadn’t ruined things with xir squishy morsel after all. Xie took a few steps forward towards him.

“ **Hi, Eddie,** ” xie purred as he uttered ‘whoa, whoa’ sounds Anne gleefully confirmed were noises of attraction.

Carefully, xie lifted xir morsel to his feet. Then, drawing on Anne’s memories, Venom initiated the most enthusiastic pretend face-eating xie could manage while extending tendrils into Eddie’s body. He returned the gesture just as enthusiastically, which both encouraged xir and seemed to be arousing xir host, but the damage in his body…

Venom could fix a good deal of it. There were bruises and lacerations, a lot of painful but minor injuries, and the ‘kiss’ lasted for several breaths while xie repaired damaged cells and poured excess blood into his vessels. Xie almost didn’t realize xie was transferring hosts until Eddie pulled back in shock, breaking the still-enthusiastic kiss he had been sharing with Anne.

“Wha- _Annie?_ ”

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, smiling.

 **Did you truly not expect her to come for you?** Venom asked curiously.

 _No, I…didn’t expect her to…kiss me._ His mental voice was thick with confusion, nearly-overwhelming confusion that swirled up and threatened to drown him.

**She didn’t. I did.**

_Oh._ That stopped the swirling reaction completely. _It was a very, uh, nice…wait,_ he said sharply as Venom’s thoughts started to bleed over. _Riot? Who’s- oh fuck, he’s in Drake. They’re going to take off in the rocket. We have to stop that rocket._ “We have to stop that rocket,” he repeated out loud. “Riot – he’s in Drake, Annie. He’s gonna launch the rocket and bring back a bunch more of his jackboot symbiote thugs.”

**Riot will be much stronger than me, after feasting unchecked for six months. But Skirth knows how to use sound to kill us, and you are a compatible host, so we have an advantage – however slim it is.**

_Skirth’s here? Good, we may just have a chance. Come on, you and me, we distract Drake while Annie and Skirth figure out a way to stop him and Riot._

**You intend to sacrifice yourself for her again.**

_Yeah, and you’re not gonna argue because you know Annie’s a better thinker than me and besides, you kinda owe me for the whole ‘snacking on me’ thing._

Guilt made Venom squirm.

_Yeah, that’s what I thought. So you and me, we go into the ring with Drake and Riot. We somehow manage to survive, you’re forgiven. Just don’t do it again._

**I would never!**

The intensity of that vow rippled through Eddie, and he paused. _You really wouldn’t, would you?_ His voice was soft and full of awe. _Right, let’s give Annie a lift and go fuck up a rocket._

“Are you two done in there?” Anne demanded, hands on her hips, but she was more amused than impatient.

Eddie smiled at her. “Yup. Buckle up, Annie, ‘cuz you’re taking the Venom Express to Drake’s rocket pad.”

“I’m what-”

Venom engulfed Eddie’s body and scooped Anne into xir arms. She wrapped her arms around xir neck and clung while they ran through the woods, following Eddie’s mental map back to the compound.

 

** Anne **

Anne didn’t have much to do on the scarily quick trip back – just clinging to the blended entity that was equal parts the ex she wished weren’t her ex, and the alien symbiote that was going to be her life partner in pretty much every way. Well, assuming they all survived and Drake/Riot didn’t manage to use the rocket to bring back an army of people-eating alien Nazis.

As they came to a stop and she was set on her feet, that last thought sparked another and she grabbed Venom’s wrists. Except that Venom was retreating, leaving her holding Eddie’s hands – _hand_ , because he’d freed one to pull out his phone and press it into her hands.

“It’s got the pictures I took of Drake’s lab,” he said hurriedly, not looking at her. “Take it, just in case…”

In case he didn’t survive. Anne shoved the thought aside even as she stuffed the phone into her pocket.

“Eddie? Listen to me a sec. _You don’t have to kill Riot.”_ The words spilled out of her, splashing over him until he reluctantly met her gaze. “You don’t have to stop the rocket. All you have to do is keep Drake from being _on_ the rocket when it takes off. _If_ it takes off. You understand? Don’t be a hero, Eddie. We can kill Riot. Just _delay_ him, okay baby? Play it smart and come back to me afterwards.”

For the second time in as many days, Eddie gave her the look of complete vulnerability a man wears when he expects to die. This time, Anne didn’t hesitate. She took his face in her hands and kissed him, hot and heavy, quick and dirty.

“Annie,” he moaned as she let him up for air, sounding utterly miserable. “I’m so sorry for everything. I love you.”

A sob caught in her throat. “You don’t have anything to be sorry _for_ , Eddie. _I’m_ sorry for everything. I love _you_. Venom? Bring him back safe.”

“ **I will try,** ” the symbiote rumbled as he engulfed Eddie again.

From somewhere above their heads, a siren ripped through the night and a recording announced T-minus five minutes to launch and that the auto sequence had been initiated.

“Go!” shouted Anne, but Venom was already leaping away, lost to the darkness in moments.

Taking a guess that the building with all the windows that faced the bridge leading to the launch pad would house the control center, Anne started running towards the door – but before she could reach it, the recording announced T-minus four minutes thirty seconds, and then the door burst open to release a stream of terrified employees fleeing like animals before a forest fire.

“What’s going on?” she demanded, grabbing one by the arm and swinging him out of the path of danger. A shower of broken glass in the distance was the figure she assumed to be Riot leaping out of the windows.

Her hapless informant pinned her with an expression of barely-contained terror, the whites of his eyes startlingly bright against his dark skin. “Drake’s turned into a monster! He killed Anderson and initiated the launch and said he’d pilot the rocket himself but the fuel’s _still being loaded_ and the strongback _won’t move out of the way_ until that’s complete!”

“English,” she snapped. “What’s going to happen in-”

**_“T-minus four minutes to launch.”_ **

“-four minutes?”

“The rocket’s going to explode,” the man moaned.

Shit. _Shit_. “Call nine-one-one,” she ordered, and was rewarded with a shaky nod.

He ran towards safety. She ran inside, looking for the control center.

 

** Venom **

_Okay, so Riot’s stronger,_ Eddie said as they ran. _Has he got any other tricks up his sleeve? What else can he do?_

 **He can form sharp objects out of his body, strong enough to slice rock,** Venom answered shortly, not arguing Eddie’s choice in assigning Riot male pronouns. **And his feeding will have given him the advantage in mass.**

_Okay, so what, he’s bigger than you?_

A large figure, nearly twice Venom’s height, leaped through the large windows overlooking the bridge that led to the launch platform.

 _Oh, Jesus!_ Eddie shouted as Riot began running full speed for the rocket. _How the hell are we supposed to take that guy?_

**We can’t.**

Venom began chasing after xir leader. Eddie was silent for a handful of moments, thinking about Anne and her other mate and how he desperately wanted to be with her again, but felt that he didn’t deserve it because he’d caused the situation that had forced her to end their relationship.

 **You know she still has feelings for you. Strong ones,** Venom added pointedly.

 _Yeah,_ Eddie said with pained determination, _and if I stick around I’m just gonna fuck her life up more. She has Dan. She doesn’t need me. The best thing I can do is get the hell out of her life before I ruin her relationship again. So what do you think our chances are of taking the douche-duo out without getting killed?_

Venom voiced a dry growl. **Pretty much zero.**

 _Well, fuck it,_ Eddie sighed. _Let’s go save Annie and the planet._

 ** _“T-minus four minutes,”_** blared the recorded voice.

Four minutes. All they had to do was not die for two hundred and forty seconds.

Easier said than done.

It took a handful of those seconds to outpace Riot, racing along the underside of the bridge, and then Venom swung up to land in the other symbiote’s path.

“ **Venom,** ” growled Riot in annoyance. “ **Get in the rocket.** ”

Riot didn’t know yet that Venom was going against him. Well, that certainly was…something. Too bad it wasn’t something useful.

“ **No,** ” Venom snarled with something like Eddie’s sass. “ **We won’t let you destroy this world.** ”

Riot didn’t even hesitate at the implication that Venom had taken up xir soft-hearted tendencies again and sided with the natives. “ **Then die,** ” he declared. One hand blurred into a heavy, spiked ball.

This was going to _hurt_.

 _Distract, right?_ Eddie said desperately as they leaped out of the way. _If he’s trying to kill us, he can’t get to the rocket. We just gotta play keep-away._

Venom did xir absolute best to keep away from the spiked ball, and the giant, curved blade the other arm had turned into. Xie almost wasn’t successful.

 _Holy shit!_ Eddie screamed as the blade severed the metal walkway a finger’s width from their face.

 **Told you,** Venom grunted, trying to think past xir host’s panic and plan how the next blow wasn’t going to impale them like a bug.

**_“T-minus three minutes.”_ **

One down. A quarter of the way there. Venom rolled and flipped away from Riot as he pulled his sword arm back, metal screeching as it parted. The bigger symbiote charged, spike-ball arm forming into a sword, and Venom formed xir arm into a shield that gave just enough to blunt the impact as that sword slammed into _it_ instead of their head. Then Eddie threw an image at xir – a rabbit punching a figure made of sticky black tar – and Venom captured the sword, causing Riot to grapple with them before pulling his mass back into an arm. Venom pressed xir advantage and shot one arm out to engulf Riot’s head, repeating one of the things xie’d done in Eddie’s apartment and slamming the other symbiote head-first into the walkway hard enough to dent the metal surface.

 _Field goal!_ Eddie’s enthusiastic shout brought images…

As Riot lifted his head, Venom kicked it like a football star, sending the bigger symbiote flying backwards quite a ways.

“ **You have a strong host,** ” Riot acknowledged grudgingly as he slid to a halt. “ **But not strong enough.** ”

 _I can do this all day,_ taunted Eddie silently, sharing an image of a human weakling, bloody and dazed but refusing to give up and admit defeat. _Or at least, for the next two minutes._

Riot raised dual blade-hands and…plunged them into the walkway? No! Attacking from underneath! It took giving a considerable amount of ground, flipping backwards again and again and again, before they were far enough away that Riot could not reach them. But instead of retracting, he flowed along the line of his mass and closed with them, claws tearing at Venom’s body as Riot sought to damage them up close and personal. Venom was able to spin Riot around, smash his head into the side of the bridge structure, but then the other symbiote formed a dozen spikes that shot up out of his own back to impale them and xie was flung back against the railing, frantically checking Eddie’s body for punctures.

In that moment of distraction, Riot ripped off a chunk of…something…and swatted Venom down the walkway to slam into the side and skid to a halt, only to chase xir down, pick xir up, and hurl xir bodily into one of the structures on the launch platform. Again, Riot was on them before Venom could shake xir dazed head clear, tackling them like that football star. Xie didn’t see the claws until it was too late to dodge, and the impact flung xir body around.

**_“T-minus two minutes, thirty seconds.”_ **

They were _so_ doomed. And Eddie was…beyond dazed, he was barely responsive. Venom limply allowed Riot to hoist them into the air, concentrating instead on repairing the damage to xir fragile morsel. Xie was rewarded with Eddie screaming in pain as Riot threw them to the ground and tried to peel Venom off of xir host.

The fight that ensued was too fast for thought, too dirty for comprehension, with both symbiotes trying to peel each other back and their exposed hosts flailing, trying to strike at any part of the other host that was within reach. It was a good delaying tactic, but futile in the end as Riot…subsumed them. Venom pulled Eddie into a ball inside xir, forming as strong a shield between xir precious morsel and the other symbiote’s body as xie could while Riot…climbed the rocket?

Suddenly, vibrations sliced through Riot’s body. Sound, very loud and in a very painful range, ripped at them from nearby and Venom dove, hiding as much of xir diminished mass inside Eddie’s body cavity as xie could. Riot had far too much mass to seek refuge the same way, and he screamed as the sound lashed at him, shaking him apart, shredding his body molecule by molecule until he was forced out of his host and both humans plummeted towards the unforgiving surface of the platform.

The sound cut off as soon as they began to fall, thankfully, and Venom surged out to take the impact, protecting Eddie but also preventing Drake’s skull from splattering like an egg. A tasty, crunchy egg that Eddie would _not_ enjoy biting into one bit, but Venom _deserved_ this treat. Xie puppeted Eddie to his feet and was about to engulf him when-

 ** _“Houston!”_** shouted Anne frantically, her voice coming out of wherever the horrible, painful noise had emanated from. **_“We have a problem!”_**

Venom was suddenly struck with a memory: sitting on the couch with Anne, cuddling, barely paying attention to the movie because watching her be so into it was _so much better_ than any movie could ever be. Astronauts in a tiny capsule. “Houston, we have a problem.” The words that were the tipping point in the story about the space vessel being damaged and the astronauts fighting for their lives-

The space vessel being damaged?

Drake’s rocket had been damaged!

Eddie snapped awake as Venom hastily did xir best to repair even _more_ of the injury he had suffered. He lashed out with one foot, kicking Drake between the legs with a vicious sense of satisfaction. At Venom’s urging, he turned and began to run for the edge of the platform-

Pain! Sharp, bright pain that burned like fire crashed down into Eddie’s left shoulder before they reached that promising edge, shattering the human’s concentration and also his collarbone as it sliced down his back. He collapsed, and thudding indicated that Riot was leaving them for dead. Probably because the recording had just announced T-minus one minute. Fighting back the blinding agony xir host was experiencing, Venom forced Eddie’s body to climb to its feet and run the last handful of stumbling steps to the edge of the platform where xie jumped, engulfing Eddie’s unconscious body-

Behind them, a tremendous roar signaled the rocket’s engines had ignited. They were falling, but not fast enough and when the rocket’s fuel tanks exploded, the blast caught Venom full on the back and hurled xir out away from the platform, shrieking as xir very flammable body caught fire. _Bring him back safe,_ Anne had begged xir, and Venom would do xir best to protect Eddie.

Even if it cost xir life.

Screaming with the effort, Venom formed a smoldering parachute with what was left of xir body and held it open as long as xie could, but the fire was all-consuming and soon Eddie was falling again. Venom surged into his flesh, fleeing the fire before it consumed xir entirely, mostly mending the broken bone before xie forced his body into a lance that pierced the skin of the ocean smoothly. Eddie woke to cold and shock and Venom engulfing his head to keep him from filling his lungs with salt water, but propelling him to the surface took almost more than xie had and as soon as Eddie’s head emerged into the air, Venom slithered down his throat. They had spent too much time merged, and if they did not separate, Venom would not only complete their bond but lose xir mind from being stretched too thin.

 **Goodbye, Eddie,** xie rumbled weakly as xie settled into his stomach, uncertain if xie would even survive long enough to be reunited with xir host.

Xir last moment of awareness was Eddie’s growing panic, struggling against the pain that threatened to break him.

 

** Dr. Skirth **

Nervously, Dora hurried through the halls, every nerve alert for the slightest hint of Carlton Drake’s presence. She still had no idea what she was going to do about the rocket, but salvaging her data seemed like a wise precaution. It was a good bet the government was going to get wind of this, and making herself useful to the feds sure sounded like a smart investment in her future career.

Fortunately, but not unexpectedly, it was simplicity itself to walk into her office and stuff her external hard drive into her purse – along with the handful of personal effects she’d kept there.

“Skirth?”

Dora about had a heart attack, but it was just Dr. Emerson standing in the doorway.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said apologetically. “Should have known you’d be on edge, with Drake pacing around like a lunatic after the last symbiote died. Hey – do you have any idea what happened to it? None of us had anything to give him, and I thought he was going to bite my head off.”

“I killed it,” she said sharply, zipping her purse shut with an abrupt motion. “He tried to feed me to it. Listen, you’ve got to get out of here. You and everyone else. It’s not safe.”

Emerson reeled back. “You _killed-_ ”

“Listen to me!” Dora got right in his face. “There were _four_ of these things on the shuttle, Emerson! We thought the fourth one died, but look at what we know now!”

The older man paled. “My god. It survived. It’s _out there_ somewhere.”

“No.” She settled her purse on her shoulder. “It’s _here_. They found a body in the airport with intense, widespread cellular damage. We imprisoned three of its fellows, experimented on them and tortured them.”

“The one that escaped,” Emerson breathed in horror. “Oh my god. They’ll eat us all in revenge! We have to get out of here!”

Before she could say anything more he was running down the hall, and she let him go. Drake still had a rocket, and Riot was sure to want it. Lost in thoughts of how she could stop or sabotage the launch, she hurried towards the command center – or at least, where she thought it was. She’d never been there, and all the corridors looked the same. She stopped in an intersection, trying to get her bearings, as a slim man in black strode imperiously down the hall to glare at her as he passed. Only when she realized his eyes were a seething gunmetal grey did it sink in: that was _Carlton Drake_ , and he didn’t seem to recognize her.

Riot, she thought with a chill. Then her scientific mind kicked into gear.

Riot hadn’t recognized her. He – he? – hadn’t reacted to her at all, despite Drake having last seen her as Toxin’s intended meal and with the symbiote dead, he had to suspect she’d killed it, which meant…

…which meant Drake wasn’t a compatible host, because the bonding process took far longer than the window of time in which he could have _become_ a host, and had a much greater impact _on_ the host, and of course Riot was a bully who wouldn’t want to empathize with his hosts, which meant that _true_ symbiosis, where symbiote and host were one in body and mind, wasn’t what was going on.

Drake was being ridden like a vehicle of flesh, and Riot couldn’t access his memories.

With that nugget of information tucked up her sleeve, she turned and followed Drake down the halls and corridors until he vanished into the hangarlike command center. Then, as further insurance for her safe future, she took out her phone and began filming from the edge of the room. Drake’s declaration that he’d pilot the spacecraft seemed damning enough, but then he force-initiated a five-minute countdown to launch, and then he _turned into a monster_ and started _killing people_ before jumping out the window and running towards the rocket.

Dora grabbed a stunned technician who seemed rattled but unharmed. “How do we stop the launch?”

The other woman stared blankly before focusing on her. “We – there’s an abort code. If we can find-”

She followed the technician as she scrambled for a printed booklet, flipped through pages until she got to the right one, and then dashed for a monitor that hadn’t been smashed. The technician fiddled with the keyboard, muttering “no, no, no” under her breath before looking up in despair.

“He screwed up the sequence,” she spat, her eyes begging Dora for some shred of reassurance. “It’s not taking the code because there’s two sequences running. The program wasn’t meant for that.”

“So what’s going to happen?” Dora asked shakily.

The other woman shuddered. “My guess? The engines are going to fire before fueling has actually stopped and the whole thing’s going to go up in the biggest fireball you’ve ever seen.”

She turned to run, but Dora caught her wrist. “Can you get me into the broadcast systems? I’m from the lab, I know how to kill the thing that ate Drake, but I need to access the platform’s sound system.”

“Front of the room,” the woman said, pointing. “Now, I need to get out of here and call nine-one-one!”

“Yes, do that,” Dora agreed. “Thank you!”

She’d just identified the proper station when Anne ran in, looked around, and skidded to a stop beside her.

“The rocket’s going to explode,” she panted. “And Riot’s in Drake.”

“Where’s Venom?”

“With Eddie. They’re going to try to keep Riot from getting on the rocket. _Tell_ me you have a plan, because I’ve got nothing.”

Dora brandished her rigged-together sound bomb. “We get this to play over the speakers by the rocket if Riot gets too close. But we also need to warn them that the rocket’s going to turn into a giant fireball.”

“Without also warning Riot.”

“Exactly. But Riot and Drake aren’t compatible; Riot can’t access Drake’s memories. So _your_ job,” she said, pushing the slighter woman into a nearby desk chair, “is to think of something _Eddie_ would know means ‘you’re in danger, get out of there’ without _saying_ ‘you’re in danger, get out of there’. And _my_ job is to get _this_ to play over _that,_ ” she finished, pointing at the sound equipment.

It was a tense two minutes as they watched the fight through various cameras, aware of the numbers ticking down, but the aliens and their hosts weren’t close enough for Dora to be confident that the sound would actually hurt them. Then Riot seemed to eat Venom and Eddie before scrambling up the side of the rocket, and Dora saw her chance.

The lab’s siren alarm blared from a powerful speaker uncomfortably close to the rocket, causing Riot to shudder and visibly lose mass as it was shaken away from him by the sound waves, and then he and Drake and Eddie were falling and Anne hit the cut-off switch. Dora turned off the sound, and Anne snatched up the microphone.

“Houston!” she yelled as Eddie stood shakily back up. “We have a problem!”

Dora arched an eyebrow at her. “I’m not sure whether to make fun of you for that or feel ashamed that it didn’t occur to me.”

Eddie must have realized what was going on, because he delivered a vicious kick to Drake’s nuts and ran for the edge of the platform, but Riot re-formed around his host and lashed out with a giant sword-arm, just barely clipping Eddie but hitting hard enough to send him tumbling. They held their breath as Eddie stood shakily back up and jumped, and almost at the same time the rocket’s engines ignited the fuel lines.

Anne screamed, a raw sound that made Dora wince away, but that motion meant she was looking in the right direction as a small shape expanded, lit from behind by the fireball. “Look!” was all she managed to articulate, but it was enough.

In silent horror, they watched the flames devour Venom’s body as he kept Eddie from plunging immediately to his death. Anne, of course, was the first to react once they lost sight of him.

“Emergency boat,” she blurted. “What if someone falls off or the pylons need maintenance? There has to be an emergency boat somewhere.”

Two long, frantic minutes of searching later, they identified an emergency boat dock… _thing_ and ran for it.

“Venom’s mass will be severely depleted if he survived,” Dora panted as they ran. “He’ll need to feed on something live.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Anne replied, taking the lead on a set of concrete stairs. “Right now, all I can think about is finding Eddie.”

“Fair enough.”

There was a first-aid kit on the wall of the dock…room? Cavern? and Dora grabbed it while Anne shouted for the two men starting the boat to wait for them.

“Saw the explosion,” one of them said as they helped the ladies on board and zipped off into the dark waters. “Looked like someone had a parachute, but it caught on fire.”

“He did,” panted Anne, “and it did.”

“Well, we got a pretty good fix on him,” said the other man, the one piloting the boat. “Should be able to find him pretty easy if he’s still alive.”

Searchlights mounted on the front of the craft lit up, bathing their path in brutal illumination. Despite the breathtaking speed the boat was moving at, it seemed to take forever before they caught sight of Eddie on the maintenance dock for one of the massive spotlights mounted on a small island. Anne leaped off the boat before it had been properly secured and ran to the sprawled figure, blocking him from their view with her body.

She didn’t quite hide the shudder that wracked him, or the wet sound of a man vomiting seawater.

Anne retreated as the two boatmen approached, and let them carry Eddie’s unconscious body back to the boat where they laid him on the…floor? Dora was more concerned with the way Anne seemed to be cradling her left hand.

“Are you okay?” she asked the shaken blonde as the boat sped back towards the dock.

“Hungry,” came the answer, ground out between gritted teeth. “Too small. Hand only.”

If Venom was reduced to that little mass, then he would need very small things to eat. What could someone find and buy at night that was alive and small?

By the time they got back, she had an answer.

“Live bait,” she murmured to Anne as the boatmen carried Eddie’s unconscious body off the boat and put him on a stretcher.

Anne fumbled a card out of her wallet one-handed and shoved it at her. “Go with Eddie,” she groaned.

Dora took Eddie’s insurance card, pulled out her keys, and pressed them into Anne’s non-Venom hand. “Take my car.”

Then there were EMTs rushing up, taking possession of the stretcher, and Dora had to follow them with no time to even look back at Anne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I choose to believe that the rocket's scaffolding staying upright during liftoff was not a mistake, but an indication that Carlton "don't bother me with details" Drake screwed up the launch because that's hubris too delicious to pass up. In his arrogance, he brought about his own downfall. Also, Eddie never would have survived that fall - he was falling for long enough that landing in the water ass-first would have ripped his heart right out as his ribcage collapsed and tore the major vessels free while his liver and spleen shattered.


	6. All's well that ends with kisses

**Anne **

_Hungry._

That one thought pulsed through her brain with every beat of her heart. Hunger gnawed at her, burned her, clawed at her until she could no longer remember where she was driving, or why. Siri’s smooth, artificial voice commanded and she, mindless thrall of famine, obeyed.

_“Arrived.”_

Ingrained routine took over, and Anne pulled into the first empty parking spot. She was here because…she had to buy…she needed _food_.

She was _so very_ hungry.

Purse clutched in her right hand, left hand curled protectively against her side, she locked the car and shuffled quickly into the little corner store in search of…of…

_Hungry!_

The bell jingled above her head. She turned towards the welcoming glow of a cooler advertising…live bait, _yes_ , that’s what she needed. There were twenty little plastic tubs in the cooler, some full of loose soil and others filled with liquid and dark shapes, and she carried them all precariously to the register. The man behind the counter said…something…but it was just noise and then he was stacking her tubs into a plastic bag while she shoved her credit card into the ritual slot until the beep freed her to remove it. She accepted her bag and a slip of paper and shuffled back out, still unsure of what the man had said.

She didn’t care. She was _hungry_.

When she reached the car – it wasn’t _her_ car, whose car was it? – she put her purse and her bag on the trunk and greedily fumbled one tub out. Weakly-clutching fingers pried the lid off, and then she plunged her left hand into the loose soil, feeling the skitter of tiny legs against her skin before _something_ stirred, reached, _ate_ , and they were gone.

More. She needed _more_.

A second tub was fumbled out, lid pried off and blindly pressed down to cover the first, and her hand feasted on the tiny lives that were devoured whole and sucked dry.

Another.

 _Another_.

**Another.**

The empty tubs were piling up, the hunger easing from mindlessly all-consuming to simply all-consuming, and she made small sounds of satisfaction as her hand fed. Then a voice interrupted.

“Whatcha doin’ there, hot stuff? This some kinda fetish you got goin’ on?”

She didn’t even bother looking at the man; another tub turned into a snack for her ravenous hand and she hummed relief at how _good_ it felt to _eat_. “Something,” she said vaguely as she pried the next tub open.

The man moved behind her, one hand on her breast and the other cupping her groin.

 _That_ was startling enough that it pushed her hunger away for the space of a breath. “Excuse me??”

“Just helpin’ you out, mama,” the man cooed against her neck. “I figure, if this is your fetish, you gotta be pretty hot and bothered, right?”

His fingers twitched against her flesh.

“Maybe you could return the favor, ya dig?”

He wanted her to put her hand on his groin.

 _Her hand_.

**Hungry.**

She reached behind her, fumbling, until her fingers found a bulge in the front of his pants. The hunger in her hand _reached-_

Pleasure swept up her hand, igniting her brain, slaking enough of the writhing _need_ that she was no longer a slave to it, and she remembered-

Eddie, on the dock, shivering and lost within himself, not recognizing that she was there. His stomach heaving as he brought up sea water and a writhing patch of blackness that she reached for without hesitation, concern fading to hunger such as she had never known as Venom puddled within her left hand.

Venom!

_Don’t eat him!_

**Why not?** The symbiote was disengaging, though, and the man screamed as he hobbled off.

Anne tried not to laugh at the thought that no one in his life would _ever_ want the contents of his testicles more desperately than she had a minute ago, and he was being _completely_ unappreciative of it.

_Come on, we’ve got a few tubs left._

**Tiny tasty snacks…**

Eagerly, Venom surged into each tub as she opened it until they were all empty of life and he was strong enough to flow through her flesh and settle into her chest.

**Eddie! Is he-?**

_He’s alive,_ she assured him as she stuffed the empty tubs back into the bag and tucked it into the trunk of Dora’s car. _Now that I can think again, we’re going to the hospital to see him._

Venom shifted guiltily.

_Hey, none of that. You saved him._

Anne climbed back into the car and checked her phone, read the text from Dora telling her which hospital Eddie had been brought to, and set Siri to give her directions there.

 **You took me back,** Venom said quietly as she drove.

_What about it?_

**You could have let me die.**

She didn’t bother responding to that in words; her affronted indignation was more than enough, and Venom curdled with gratitude and relief.

“We need to figure out how much you need to eat and how often,” Anne said out loud, following Siri’s directions absently. “There has _got_ to be a better way to feed you than twenty tubs of live bait.”

**And a sleazebag’s nuts.**

“And a sleazebag’s nuts. Let’s not tell anyone about that.”

**Why?**

“Because Eddie and Dan will get upset about the groping, and I’d rather they not get distracted right now.”

Venom was quiet for a long minute. As she was maneuvering into a parking space up the street from the hospital’s entrance, he spoke again.

**You are afraid to be seen as weak.**

“I’m a lawyer, Venom. If I’m seen as weak, I can’t do my job effectively, and I’m already at a disadvantage for being a woman.”

He contemplated that as she strode briskly down the street, pretending she didn’t see the man weaving  around the corner and drinking from something in a paper bag. Memories of court cases flooded her mind, Venom investigating countless interactions with other lawyers. She had almost passed the drunk when he slurred something and grabbed her arm. She shook off his grip, but he stumbled against her and – mostly by accident – pinned her to the low wall protecting the entrance from the adjacent street. While she was fighting to move her arms up and shove him away, he pressed his mouth to hers.

Against her will, her mouth opened-

-and Venom, having forced her to provide an escape route, slithered from her mouth to the drunk’s.

In shock, she stood there, pinned to the wall while the drunk twitched and moaned. When he collapsed, Venom left his body and returned to hers by surging up her leg.

Anne walked briskly around the corner like nothing had happened, registering the feeling of the symbiote settling into every part of her body and being mildly perplexed at the fact that this now felt _normal_.

 **The bonding process is nearly complete,** Venom said almost apologetically.

 _What happens when it is?_ she asked, pulling out her phone to check the text from Dora. Eddie was due to come out of surgery shortly. _Will you die if you’re away from me too long? Will I?_

**Nothing like that. But you will be unable to act as a host for another symbiote, even temporarily. They will be…greatly uncomfortable in your flesh. And we have already passed the stage where I can sustain myself on your body. Thankfully.**

Anne smiled and shook her head as she strode down hospital corridors to meet up with Dora. _That didn’t even occur to me when I scooped you up. Why were you in Eddie’s stomach?_

**We were coming too close to a complete bond, and I did not have the mass to maintain myself if I remained merged with him.**

_So wait, why is bonding to Eddie a bad thing?_

Wordlessly, he suggested the idea of spending a day with Eddie as his host instead of her. The violently territorial reaction that evoked from her stunned her into horrified silence.

 _I withdraw the question,_ she thought shakily as they arrived at the waiting room where Dora was trying to occupy herself with outdated magazines.

“You made it,” Dora exclaimed in relief as she saw Anne approaching. “Did you find…what you need?”

“I did,” Anne confirmed, taking a seat next to her. “We need to talk about…what we saw.”

Dora’s eyes narrowed, and she nodded. “What _did_ we see?”

“Well, first, Eddie was abducted by Drake’s…security forces.”

“Obviously,” murmured the other woman.

“You went to check your lab, suspecting that he was being used as a test subject in retribution for his earlier association with you, while I went looking for Drake.”

“And I…found him.” The words were uncertain, just shy of a question.

Anne nodded. “You found him, your suspicions were correct, the symbiote suddenly manifested and escaped. You and I met up in the command center, where we watched everything.”

Dora let out a little gasp. “Oh. The cameras…”

“… _clearly_ show that Eddie was severely concussed from the fight and I’d be surprised if he remembered any of it.”

“Especially since the host-to-symbiote communication is severely lacking,” Dora added primly. “To judge by how Drake didn’t recognize me. So clearly anything we _saw_ Eddie’s body do was the work of the symbiote.”

“Which unfortunately burned entirely up doing the parachute stunt,” Anne finished.

The two women grinned at each other. Behind Anne’s eyes, Venom was quietly impressed that they had constructed a plausible version of events without being able to discuss it openly.

“So, uh, Eddie…?”

Dora started. “Oh! Of course. Concussion, lacerations, abrasions, minor damage to his liver from the impact, his entire back is covered in blisters and burns, but he was exceedingly lucky. It looks like some of his bones are fractured, but just very, very small fractures. The big thing was that slash on his shoulder, but Dr. Lewis said it was very clean and he expected Eddie to recover full use of the arm.”

“That’s good,” Anne breathed, and a second later she was laughing silently.

 _Dan just gave you an alibi,_ she clarified to the puzzled symbiote. _When you heal Eddie- you **are** going to heal him, right?_

Venom gave her a taste of her own affronted indignation.

_-when you heal Eddie, It won’t stand out as being unusual because Dan said he expected it to happen._

**That is a very tricky deception,** Venom said. **I am impressed that you and he were able to coordinate so well without speaking beforehand.**

 _We make a good team,_ Anne replied proudly. _He’s on my wavelength. We think alike and we plan alike and living with him…sharing my life with him…is like being two halves of the same whole._

**But yet you feel empty.**

Anne grimaced. _No partnership is perfect. With Dan, I have all the coordination and support I never had with Eddie. But…_

Silently, Venom smirked.

_Shut up! He probably doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore._

**Are you going to make that decision for him,** Venom asked pointedly, **the way you made so many others?**

The barb hit home, and guilt flooded her. She _had_ run roughshod all over Eddie when they were together, never asking his opinion or asking only to immediately disregard it because it didn’t fit her idea of what was logical.

 _I’ll talk to him,_ she promised. _If he wants to talk._

Endorphins flooded her body, making her feel warm and relaxed and…rewarded. So, her new life-partner could do that. She tucked the information aside to deal with later.

While they waited, she and Dora made coded small-talk about Venom, discussing how Anne had been “dying” for some “really fresh seafood” and that having found and eaten some, she felt “revived”. Eddie was wheeled out, still under sedation, and they followed like lost ducklings as he was settled into a private room with a cot set up for Anne and IV bags of fluid and painkillers for Eddie. Dora hovered on the sidelines until they were alone, and then tentatively offered the suggestion that she go home so the authorities could find her easier.

“Wait a second,” Anne told her. “People are going to want to know what happened. You don’t just blow up a rocket and sweep it under the rug.”

Dora nodded. “I pocketed my personal research. When the men in black come for me, I’ll go willingly.”

“But before that happens,” Anne pressed, ignoring Venom’s vaguely-guilty alarm, “how do you feel about giving an interview?”

It took the other woman a second for the implications to filter in, and her eyes widened. “Eddie?”

Anne smiled grimly. “ _Someone’s_ got to get the scoop on all of this, and I intend to make sure that _someone_ is Eddie. He deserves it, after Drake ruined his career.”

Dora sat back down, purse settled firmly on her lap. “Consider me your star witness.”

 

It wasn’t easy, getting the home number of Eddie’s ex-boss, but it was worth it.

 _“Ms. Weying,”_ Jack growled at her. _“To what, exactly, do I owe this dubious honor?”_

“The massive fireball Carlton Drake’s rocket made when it exploded,” she answered smugly. “I bet you wish you had someone who could report on it, huh?”

The silence on the other end of the phone was immensely gratifying.

“I do happen to know someone who can give you the scoop,” she continued cheerfully, “complete with a Life Foundation scientist to interview. But if you want that report, you’re going to need to put your money where your mouth is and send a camera crew to the hospital.”

She could almost _feel_ Jack glaring at her through the phone. _“How much?”_

“How much money is it going to take for Eddie Brock to not tell you where to shove your money after you fired him?” she asked sweetly. “Let’s start with ten thousand.”

_“Ten tho-”_

“For the _first_ report. If you want to make sure I don’t immediately call all your competitors once I hang up and offer _them_ Eddie’s report, it’s going to be more.”

 _“How much more?”_ he asked, his voice wary.

“How much would it take _you_ to talk to the company who forced you to suck Drake’s dick on live TV and then fired you for not kissing up while you did it?”

 _“I’ll have to make a few calls,”_ he ground out. _“I’ll call you back.”_

“Better make them fast,” she warned, all the lightness and humor gone. “If I can’t give Eddie a big enough number when he wakes up from surgery, he’s going to tell you to do something you can’t say on the air.”

 _“I’m aware,”_ Jack said dryly.

The call disconnected. Dora applauded politely.

It was less than half an hour later when Jack called back, and although he hissed a little when she threw down a counter-offer, he grudgingly agreed to a payment of thirty thousand dollars via cashier’s check, to be delivered by the camera crew in the morning. Anne thanked him sweetly and hung up. It took only moments to work out arrangements with Dora – she’d be in a nearby hotel, and Anne would call her when Eddie woke up – and then it was just Anne, Venom, and Eddie’s drugged-up slumbering form.

Venom enveloped her body and climbed carefully into the hospital bed, making sure to not dislodge any of the tubes going into or coming out of his body or jostle him too much as he cautiously rolled Eddie onto his right side and wriggled until Eddie was the little spoon. Then, rumbling quietly in a sort of vibration that wasn’t _quite_ a purr, he reached out with a few tendrils and began slowly fixing some of the internal damage.

Anne fell asleep being cradled within Venom’s body, cradling Eddie by proxy and feeling the possessive, territorial affection the symbiote felt for both of them blend with her own affection for Eddie.

 

** Venom **

Once Anne had fallen asleep and xie had reached the limit of how long xie could be merged with Eddie without risking a complete bond, Venom let xir body flow back inside xir host’s. The bonding process had been interrupted enough already; xie just wanted it to complete.

Xie wanted to have a _home_ again.

When it finally completed, Venom drifted in quiet joy at no longer being alone in the universe. Xie thought about sparing a moment to pity Riot’s faction for never experiencing the indescribable _belonging_  of bonding to a host, but decided against it.

In the quiet hours of early morning, Dan opened the door and slipped inside Eddie’s room.

“Just me,” he said softly. “Just checking Eddie’s vitals.”

Venom manifested a face on a tendril. Dan blinked in surprise, but did not recoil.

“Venom, I presume,” he said, pulling up the chair Skirth had sat in, “I’m not sure what I’d been expecting you to look like. Is Anne, uh…”

“ **Anne is sleeping,** ” Venom growled softly.

“Oh, good.” Dan relaxed a bit. “And the bonding process? How’s that going?”

“ **It is now complete. She is my host, and it feels…good.** ”

Softly, Dan smiled. “I imagine not having a host is uncomfortable for you. Well, welcome to the family, I guess? I mean. Not that we’re…a family. Welcome to…our household? Anyway, when we have time later I’d love to learn all about you. Your physical needs,” he clarified, sounding awkwardly like he was retracting an offer of courtship. “Not that I don’t want to get to know you personally. I’m a doctor, and I’m dating your host. I want to know how the host/symbiote dynamic works. The scientific details. I guess I should ask Dr. Skirth, huh?”

Venom tilted xir head. “ **I am surprised that** **you are being so…accepting…of my presence,** ” xie said warily. “ **Especially considering the chaos it has brought.** ”

Dan shrugged. “Chaos is just new challenges to sort out. Anne and I – we’re good at that. It makes us feel good to take chaos and force it into order. I can’t speak for her, of course, but on my end? I’m already itching to find out how often and how much you need to eat so I can find the most efficient food sources and figure out how to work that into our grocery shopping.”

“ **She was thinking along the same lines,** ” xie chuckled. Xir head tilted down to regard her sleeping form. “ **You have not said anything about…where she is.** ”

“Anne and I have talked _a lot_ about Eddie,” he said slowly. “She never made a secret of the fact that she still has very strong feelings for him, but while she was working the Life Foundation’s lawsuit, any contact with him could ruin her career. I assume Carlton Drake is dead?”

“ **Very.** ”

“Then I guess the door is open. We talked about this,” he clarified with a grimace pretending to be a smile. “I’m…not very good with physical affection, and I told her I wouldn’t object if she wanted to fill those needs on the side, but she said nothing would happen on that front until the Life Foundation case was over and even then, she’d need to talk to Eddie and see if there was anything to rebuild.”

The defeated tone in his voice reminded Venom of Eddie’s, and the symbiote curdled slightly in determination.

“ **She does not wish to give you up or intend to toss you aside,** ” xie said firmly. “ **She is quite content to live with you and knows that living with Eddie would cause them both grief. But she and Eddie _do_ need to talk.**”

Dan nodded. “Well, I knew going into the relationship that Eddie would always be the other man in her life. I just want her to be happy,” he said forlornly.

“ **So does Eddie,** ” Venom rumbled quietly. “ **So do I.** ”

The human nodded and checked Eddie’s machines while Venom watched curiously. Then he left to attend his other duties, and Venom was again alone with xir sleeping humans.

 

It was a few hours later when Eddie stirred, and Venom again enveloped xir host’s body to hug him to xir chest.

“Venom?” Eddie croaked softly.

“ **Yes.** ”

“I’m not dead.”

“ **No.** ” Then, grudgingly, “ **I did not want you to die. Even if it meant _my_ death.**”

Eddie was quiet for a long minute. Venom hugged him tighter, carefully, mindful of the tiny fractures in his ribs which xie hadn’t gotten a chance to fix yet.

“You were supposed to help Riot bring back an army of symbiotes to conquer our world and eat us all.” Eddie’s voice was fuzzy from the drugs holding pain at bay.

Venom swallowed guilt. “ **Yes.** ”

“But you didn’t. How come?”

“ **I did not want you to die,** ” Venom repeated quietly. “ **You are looked down on by your people for displaying compassion for those considered to be beneath them. Among my people,** ” xie said slowly, “ **I am looked down on for displaying compassion for those seen only as food. We are a lot alike, Eddie. Had I known you better when we first met, perhaps I would not have sought another host.** ”

“But you did.” The words were dull with muted hurt.

“ **I did, and I do not regret it.** ” Venom grinned and bent xir head to nuzzle at the back of Eddie’s neck. “ **Kisses are better from the _outside._** _”_

The human’s pulse quickened and his skin temperature rose, making Venom smile wider, but then unfamiliar footsteps approached rapidly and xie melted back into Anne’s body. The human woman who hurried in to check Eddie’s machines made enough of a fuss that by the time she left, Anne was reluctantly awake and perched on the chair while Eddie had been rolled onto his back again and was looking distinctly unhappy about it.

“What happened?” he croaked. “I can remember some things, but there’s big patches of…nothing.”

Anne scrubbed her eyes, wishing she were still cuddled up to him. “Officially, Drake’s ‘security’ team took you back on suspicion of having a stolen symbiote, which you did, and which then took over your body and duked it out with Drake, who also had a symbiote. I saw three separate incidents of head injury in that fight which could have concussed you-”

 **Is that what that is called?** Venom asked. **Yes. Eddie was concussed multiple times.**

“-so it’s no wonder you don’t remember _any of that fight_ ,” Anne said firmly. “ _Nearest anyone can tell_ , the symbiote that was using your body burned up.”

**Hah. I am starting to like watching your word games.**

Eddie groaned again. “So what’s my damage?”

“Mostly superficial,” Anne assured him. “The sort of thing you’d expect from getting the crap beaten out of you, with a side of tiny fractures in your ribs from hitting the water from that far up and the huge cut in your shoulder. There’s also a ton of burns on your back from the explosion when the rocket blew up, but all in all, it could have been a _lot_ worse.”

 _Thank you for making sure it wasn’t,_ she added silently.

Venom shared the memories of all the damage xie had repaired during the fight and after, and Anne covered her mouth in horror.

“Annie?” Eddie looked greatly concerned.

She shook her head. “Just… _thinking about_ how much worse it _could_ have been.”

“How much…”

“You don’t want to know,” Anne told him firmly. Venom chided her wordlessly, and she flushed. “I…if you really want to know, ask later. How are you feeling?”

“Probably better than I look,” Eddie joked weakly. “How do I look?”

Anne’s expression softened. “Like you went through hell.”

He offered her a lopsided smile. “Well, you know, not far from the truth.”

“Eddie?” Her fingers twisted together in her lap. “How do you feel about your old boss and your old network?”

“Why?” he asked warily.

“Because there’s going to be a camera crew on their way with a thirty-thousand-dollar cashier’s check – shit, I have to call Dora – hoping you’ll agree to do a report.”

Eddie looked conflicted, and Venom was surprised by how anxious Anne was for him to say yes.

“You can investigate him for corruption and connections to Drake once you’re all healed up,” she promised. “But for _right now_ , how do you feel about taking his blood money to give a report and throw Drake under the bus and take your reputation back all in one fell swoop?”

For a long moment, he considered it. Then he sighed. “Sure, why the fuck not. Let’s do it.”

Elation surged through Anne and she practically flew to the bed to drape herself on him in a parody of a hug, nuzzling into his neck and peppering his face with light kisses.

“It’s not a contract,” she assured him, still kissing. “This is a one-time deal. You get revenge on Drake by spilling all his dirty secrets, and you get revenge on the network by collecting half a year’s back pay plus extra for emotional suffering, and you get your _reputation_ back, baby.”

“Yeah,” Eddie murmured vaguely, trying to both hug her back and catch her lips as they flitted over his face.

“They tried to destroy you and _you lived,_ ” Anne purred, her body awash in what Venom was recognizing as arousal hormones. They were…intoxicating…and Venom found xirself caught up in xir host’s emotions. “Show them that _no one_ steps on Eddie Brock without getting bit. Channel all that stress you’ve been under into righteous anger because _you were right_ , and now you can get your revenge on Drake for everything he did to you, to _us_ , and the network that fucked you over for him is gonna lick your boots and pay through the nose for the privilege of **being exposed for the craven cowards they are** – sorry, that was Venom.”

Eddie laughed, then winced and made a sound of swallowing pain.

“Throw _them_ under the bus too, baby. You can work for whoever you want after this, they’ll _all_ be falling over themselves to scoop you up.”

Caught up in the infectious excitement, Eddie wrapped his arms around her and captured her lips for a hungry kiss she was all too eager to return. Sadly, it ended with a grunt of pain from the bruised morsel and Anne’s hormone rush suddenly bottomed out, leaving her awash in guilt with tears pricking at her eyes.

“I’m gonna call Dora and tell her the interview’s on,” she said, trying to sound as enthusiastic as she had been. “Find us both some coffee. Eddie?”

Breathing heavily, he winced. “Yeah?”

“When we split up…I handled that badly. Really, _really_ badly. I should have talked to you and I didn’t, and I caused us both a lot of pain so later, once you’re okay to be discharged…can we talk about it?”

Eddie froze. “Yeah,” he said unconvincingly. “Talk about it. Sure.”

Anne kissed his temple, remorse flooding her because she _knew_ haw badly she’d just thrown him. “Okay. I’m gonna go get that coffee and see if I can bring you some food before the camera crew gets here.”

“Sure…”

She fled the room, heels sounding boldly on the floor as she walked briskly for the elevators, giving him space to think because he couldn’t get it for himself.

 **You remembered,** Venom said silently, letting xir approval bleed over.

Anne wasn’t comforted. _I need to talk to Dan and probably cry on him._

**You feel guilty that you treated Eddie as your mate.**

She punched the button for the elevator and crossed her arms. _Damn right I do! Dan and I…we have a…I promised I’d talk to him before I did anything with anyone else and here I just…_

The elevator arrived. They boarded, and it began its descent.

 **The situation has changed,** Venom declared as the doors opened again. **Your arrangement did not take my presence into account.**

Anne threw a puzzled glance at a reflective surface as they passed. _What are you saying?_

 **I am saying that you are not the only one who enjoyed that kiss,** xie answered. **If I pursue a relationship with Eddie, and I fully intend to pursue a relationship, then that falls outside of your arrangement with Dan _and_ your conflicted past with Eddie. **

She thought about that for a minute, then guiltily pulled out her phone and called Skirth, who promised she would be there shortly.

 _Not just because I love him?_ Anne asked as she hung up.

 **I care about him for some of the same reasons you do,** xie answered firmly, **but my feelings towards him are my own. I wish to be a part of his life, regardless of what happens between you and him and Dan.**

It was a loophole, and she wasn’t about to turn it down.

_You’re right. I need to have a serious talk with Dan and work out a new arrangement._

With her emotions no longer a chaotic whirl, she strode into the hospital’s cafeteria in search of coffee and breakfast.

 

** Anne **

Cradling two cardboard cups of coffee and a Styrofoam box holding Eddie’s breakfast, Anne walked down the corridor towards Eddie’s room. Dora jogged up and fell into step with her, but as they approached, they heard voices already in the room.

“No makeup,” Eddie was snapping as Dora pushed the door open. “Come on, how long have you known me?”

The black woman with a precisely-cut cloud of hair rolled her eyes. “Eddie, you look like you crawled your way out of hell.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I did.” His eyes slid over to her, and he smiled.

For the first time, Anne registered how battered and bruised he was. He looked like he’d been worked over, which in all fairness he _had_ , with bruises all over his face, two black eyes, and a lump that was swelling one of them half shut. On top of that, he was gaunt and haggard from the strenuous day before and the stressful six months before that. He _did_ look like he’d crawled his way out of hell.

She still wanted to curl up protectively around him and kiss him until the shadows left his eyes, and silently she told Venom to not say a _word_.

“Coffee,” she said, stepping forward to offer him one of the cups.

“You are _perfect,_ ” he breathed, but his admiration dimmed and his expression flickered with doubt.

Anne turned to the camera crew. “Did you bring the check?”

The black woman, who seemed to be in charge, nodded and pulled a bank envelope out of her blazer pocket. Anne passed her coffee and the box to Dora so she could take and inspect it.

“It’s good,” she told Eddie before pocketing it. “How long before you go live?”

The cameraman peered out from behind the tripod he’d set up. “We’re good to go.”

“And Jack is riding my ass,” the woman added. “So if you’re not going to let me hide any of that, Eddie, then I guess we’re on.”

Eddie, coffee cup halfway to his mouth, grimaced and thrust it in Anne’s direction. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Let’s do this.”

Anne took the cup, reclaimed her coffee, and retreated behind the camera to sit with Dora on the cot in the back of the room. Cameraman nodded to producer, producer nodded to Eddie, and Eddie centered himself against the inclined hospital bed.

“This is Eddie Brock reporting _from my hospital bed,_ ” he started, multiple flavors of irritation giving his words an edge undulled by all the painkillers he was on, “because Carlton Drake turned into a _literal monster_ and _beat the shit out of me_. Reportedly,” he added, the word dripping sarcasm. “I mean, I have a concussion and no memory of what happened for a good chunk of last night, but _let me tell you_ all the _shit_ I do remember!”

She watched, entranced, as Eddie spun a more complete story than she’d guessed he even knew. He covered the rocket crash that had led to the interview, how Drake had leaned on the network to make him do the interview and then leaned again to get him fired, segued into the digging he’d been doing into the pancreatic cancer gene therapy with the abnormally high death toll, and effortlessly transitioned into being contacted by Dr. Dora Skirth who had not only given him information about the gene therapy but also snuck him in to check out the _human experimentation_ being done in secret.

Dora moved from the cot to the chair by the bed at that point, and he interviewed her about the symbiotes and the process of studying them while Anne sipped her cooling coffee and Venom watched with interest. Although she knew their names, Dora referred to them only by their designations – A01 (Venom) through A04 (Riot). She freely described how Drake had pressured her into human trials by threatening her family, and had pulled in homeless people who didn’t understand what they were signing up for.

Eddie took over at that point, detailing the things he’d seen briefly before giving a slightly-edited account of Venom’s escape. Glass exploding, the subject lunging at him, and then finding himself exhausted and aching on a fire escape across town. Back to Dora for an explanation of the host dynamic and how Drake had flipped over A01’s escape, and then he skipped over a good chunk of the day to go right to being tested and then abducted. Although Anne _knew_ what had happened after that, she still found herself spellbound as Eddie wove his narrative.

Well. She hadn’t known about Drake _interrogating_ him. Hearing Eddie quote his plans to ‘save’ humanity by feeding them to symbiotes until suitable hosts were found was _chilling_. But hearing that Riot had manifested and threatened him made even Venom shiver with how close they’d come to losing him.

That, Eddie lied, was the moment his missing time began. Dora took over the narrative, explaining that she’d learned the communication between host and symbiote was limited when A04 had made Drake its puppet in order to force the rocket to launch early. She described the manifestation in the command center, the attack on the technicians, and seeing A04 break through the windows and dash towards the rocket with A01 in pursuit. Then she backtracked to explain how Drake had tried to kill her, but she’d discovered that the alarm siren in the lab had killed the yellow symbiote, and used that knowledge to kill the blue one, so when A04 got near the rocket she used it again to harm it. Tearfully, she recounted watching A01 puppet Eddie’s body and throw him off the platform just as the rocket blew up, and how A01 had formed a parachute that saved Eddie’s life but at the cost of burning up itself.

“And that’s when I woke up in the water,” Eddie said. “My _everything_ hurt and I couldn’t think too good, but I swam for shore and blacked out. I woke up again in the hospital with burns and fractured ribs and a huge cut I’m told was Drake’s monster trying to chop me in half and just barely _not_ missing and half my mitochondria gone because the alien that saved my life also snacked on me to have the energy to do it. And you know what? I’m okay with that,” he declared. “He – A-zero-one – half killed me by sucking some of my juice out, but saved my life by being my parachute. And A-zero-one saved _all_ of us by keeping Drake from launching that rocket to go find the comet with millions more of those things, every one of which wants to eat us and wear us as flesh suits. So yeah. I thank A-zero-one for its sacrifice and I hope Drake’s being eaten alive in hell. This is Eddie Brock, signing off because my drugs are wearing off and everything hurts bad enough that I’d cry except that would make my ribs hurt more.”

The cameraman nodded to the producer; the producer nodded to Eddie, and Eddie slumped back against the mattress.

“If you don’t come back to the network,” the black woman said as the cameraman began to pack up, “let me know where you end up and if you need a good camera crew.”

“You got it,” he said vaguely.

They filed out, and Anne kissed his temple. “Still up for that coffee?”

“It’s probably cold, but sure. Thanks.”

“You were amazing,” she said as she handed it to him again. “Hungry? I have food.”

Eddie took a long pull of mildly-warm coffee and then set the cup on the table beside the bed. “What is it?”

“Bacon, egg, and cheese on a toasted croissant with a side of tater-tots, although it’s cold by now,” she added apologetically. “I can go down and get you something fresh-”

“Hungry,” he breathed, eyes closed, looking limp and weak against the mattress.

Anne popped the container open and pressed a room-temperature tater-tot against his lips.

“Perfect,” he murmured as he parted his lips and accepted the fried, salty morsel.

Dora cleared her throat. “I’m going back to the hotel to check out, and then I’m going home to shower and sleep. Call me,” she told Anne. “I still want to have a nice long talk with your friend later, before the government whisks me away to Area 51 or wherever they’re going to bury this.”

“ **I look forward to it,** ” Venom growled as Anne fed Eddie another tater-tot.

She nodded, collected her purse from the cot, and vacated the room.

“ **Eddie.** ”

He opened his eyes and smiled tiredly. “What’s up?”

“ **It will take some time for me to finish healing you, and then to replace what I took. But once you are whole again, I wish to continue seeing you.** ”

Eddie’s eyes flared with hope. “You do?”

Venom used Anne’s hand to caress his cheek. “ **Have you forgotten what I said?** ” He leaned in, her mouth curving in a way she’d never smiled before, and nipped at Eddie’s lips. “ **Kisses are better from the outside**.”

“Ohhhhhh, and I am okay with that,” Eddie sighed, eyes fluttering shut. “Mm. Yes. Excellent reason. Never say no to kisses.” His eyes opened again, worry creasing his forehead. “As long as Annie’s okay with it.”

“I’m going to talk to Dan,” she said, putting the breakfast container down where he could reach it and telling herself it was dumb to feel hurt that _apparently,_ a conversation happened at some point without her. “We need to have a serious talk about the addition to the household, but I’m okay with it,” she finished in a soft voice. “You just rest, alright? We’ll talk once you’re stable enough to be discharged. I know how much you hate hospitals.”

He gave her a weak smile. “Thanks, Annie.”

Dan, she confirmed outside the room when she checked her texts, had gotten out of his shift only a _little_ late and was back at the apartment sleeping. Anne sent him a brief text back letting him know the interview had gone well and that she was going to run some errands.

 **You were asleep,** Venom said as she navigated to the hospital’s main entrance. **When Eddie and I had our talk.**

That made Anne feel better, only to cause a rush of guilt.

_I never actually told him you were okay! And I didn’t know you’d talked to him. Oh my god, I’m doing it again, I’m not telling Eddie things!_

In the middle of the lobby, she stopped and veered towards a table. It took only moments for her to use Eddie’s phone and the bank’s app to deposit the cashier’s check into his account, and then she realized Eddie might like to have his phone back and retraced her steps to his room. He was asleep, the cold sandwich half-eaten and the tater-tots long gone, and she tucked his phone under his right hand before kissing him on the temple and retreating again.

 **What errands are we running?** Venom asked as they made their way to the main entrance _again_.

 _I want to get the check framed for him,_ she answered silently, _but that won’t take long. I need to go to the police and check on his bike, file a claim with his insurance if I can, although I might need to file a police report for it being stolen first. I also want to see if I can get into his apartment-_

**I can help with that.**

_-IF it’s not a crime scene still,_ she thought sharply, striding through the lobby with more determination than was really called for, _and pack some of his clothes, because I doubt he’s going to have the energy to live on his own for the next week or so, but he’s not going to want to be on bed rest in the hospital, so I’m going to set him up on our couch. That means he’ll need clean clothes, and if I can’t get into his apartment then I’ll have to buy him some, which is fine because he’ll need food so I’ll be going shopping anyway._

Outside, on the sidewalk, she paused and blinked. “Where did I leave my car?” she asked out loud, forgetting for the moment that she was no longer alone and the rhetorical question actually had an audience.

Venom manifested a face on a tendril, which honestly should have startled her but didn’t, and she wasn’t sure if it was because _Venom_ knew he could do that and therefore she did too, or if she had just given up on being weirded out by her new plurality.

“ **That way,** ” he said, facing the opposite side of the hospital from where she’d parked Dora’s car.

“Thanks,” she muttered, remembering the dead drunk and being quietly glad she wouldn’t have to see if his body was still there. “You should put that away, though, before someone sees you.”

With tangible reluctance, Venom pulled the face back into her body. “ **Is this better?** ” he asked dryly.

Anne started walking away from the hospital’s entrance, noting and dismissing the sound of footsteps turning the corner and following her. “Yes. Now I just look like I’m talking to myself.”

“ **You are very protective of Eddie.** ”

She rolled her eyes in fond annoyance. “I love him, but he’s _so bad_ at taking care of himself.”

“ **So you do it for him.** ”

“I…provide for him,” she countered carefully. “I’m not going to force him to change his clothes every day; I’m just going to make sure he _has_ clean clothes when he wants them.”

“ **And food.** ”

“Right. Well, I don’t have to _tell_ Eddie to eat, but yeah, I make sure there’s food for him.”

“ **It has been six months and you resume providing for him as though you never stopped.** ”

Anne flushed but didn’t answer.

“ **You should take him back.** ”

“I don’t even know if he _wants_ me to take him back!”

“ **Because you have not asked him!** ”

“I can’t just- it’s not fair to ask him before he’s fully recovered.”

“ **You are afraid he will say no.** ”

At the corner, Anne stopped and leaned against the wall, covering her face with both hands because Venom was right, she was _terrified_ that she’d hurt Eddie so deeply that he would only want her in his life as Venom’s host. Faint scratching and shuffling approached – the person who had been walking up the sidewalk behind her – and then a hand squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. When she opened her eyes, a mustached old man with sharp eyes behind wide sunglasses walking a small shorthair dog on a leash was giving her the sort of concerned look a grandparent might wear.

“Hey,” he said in a voice that quavered slightly, “don’t give up on him. _Either_ of you,” he added sternly, pointing with one shaky finger.

Anne found herself smiling. “We won’t,” she assured him.

 **Who was that guy?** Venom demanded as the man crossed the street with his dog. **Wait. That thing looked delicious.**

She turned the corner. “We are _not_ eating people’s pets,” she told him firmly. “Pigeons, rats, maybe – _maybe_ – a stray who’s attacking us. But not some nice old man’s dog.”

 **Fine,** Venom said sulkily. **But can we get a pizza? It smelled very, very good and you didn’t eat _any_ of it.**

At her car, Anne chuckled. The half-empty pizza boxes she’d deliberately left on the roof had, as she suspected, been whisked away and she hoped that whoever’d taken them had been in need of a good meal.

“Sure,” she agreed as she slid into the car. “As soon as the pizza places open for business, we’ll get a pizza.”

Inside her body, Venom vibrated slightly with delight. She pulled into traffic, smiling at his warm contentment at having a _home_ again. His exile on a cold, lonely comet full of his racist peers was over and he had a partner who accepted him, a place where he belonged, and the giddy possibility of something completely new: a compassionate person who was interested in him for _him_ rather than his host.

She wouldn’t give up on Eddie, she decided as she drove. She’d talk with him, work on untangling everything that had happened, and see if there was anything left to rebuild. She’d talk with Dan, for herself and for Venom, and find a way to keep Eddie in her life even if she’d hurt him too badly for things between them to work out. She’d had her chance with Eddie, and she’d blown it; if he was willing to give her another one, she would do everything in her power to make sure he was happy and cared for. But not just for herself, or even for him. For the alien who had crashed into both their lives and found more than just a compatible host, who had fought against tyranny and been willing to die to save a life, and who had discovered that kisses were even better than a pile of bodies and a pile of heads.

For Venom.


End file.
